Hezbollah Declares War On Israel...

[Johnny_D]

FFS Gaia they are perfectly fine references.

JEWS PURCHASED LAND. It's fairly simple. They purchased what [We would refer to] as small holding. Small plots of land and then worked said land.

This went on for some time (Prior to WW1 I believe).

one(1) reason things got pissy was that the arabs may well have been tenant farmers. The land gets sold and of course often the tenant farmer has to leave.

I can't see what the issue or confusion is over this simple land transaction that has been going on for at least 5000 years.

I suspect you are over-complicating it for purposes of pursuing your point. Or some type of Intellectual Brow-Beating?

JD

[gaia.plateau]

FFS Gaia they are perfectly fine references.

I suspect you are over-complicating it for purposes of pursuing your point. Or some type of Intellectual Brow-Beating?

I thought I explained pretty well why they weren't perfectly fine references, and why I was pursuing the point that to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morally and objectively wrong.

You criticized me for portraying the Israelis as "evil" and the Palestinians as "fluffy", but so far I'm the only person that considers them both to be wrong, everyone else has argued that the Zionists are perfectly justified and righteous to take revenge, while the Arabs are horrible baby-eating monsters.

[TheScotsman]

FFS Gaia they are perfectly fine references.

I suspect you are over-complicating it for purposes of pursuing your point. Or some type of Intellectual Brow-Beating?

I thought I explained pretty well why they weren't perfectly fine references, and why I was pursuing the point that to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morally and objectively wrong.

You criticized me for portraying the Israelis as "evil" and the Palestinians as "fluffy", but so far I'm the only person that considers them both to be wrong, everyone else has argued that the Zionists are perfectly justified and righteous to take revenge, while the Arabs are horrible baby-eating monsters.

No, they are horrible monsters that strap bombs to children, and retarded women then blow them up among civilians in order to kill, and injure non-combatants. They lob a few rockets, then hide in a school full of children, even hoping that Israel will strike back, so they can parade all the dead children in front of sensationalist media, all the while acting like it was Israel's fault. Makes them worse than baby-eating monsters. Makes them the lowest form of human trash to be walking the planet.

In the most simple terms, you can not have peace when one side does not want peace.

[Scoop]

SULTAN ABDULAZIZ (Born) 1830 - (Deceased) 1876 CE

Upon recurrence of blood libel accusations, Sultan Aziz issued the attached firman dated July 11th, 1866 taking the Jews under his protection. With his firman dated April 5th, 1870, the Sultan Abdul Aziz allocated the "Alliance Israelite Universelle" 2600 dunams of land east of Jaffa for the establishment of a school of agriculture and also granted permission for importing all kinds of tools and machinery free of taxes and customs. As Ben Gouriion, said: "I doubt that the Israeli dream would have been realized if the farm school of Mikveh Israel had not existed."

[gaia.plateau]

No, they are horrible monsters that strap bombs to children, and retarded women then blow them up among civilians in order to kill, and injure non-combatants. They lob a few rockets, then hide in a school full of children, even hoping that Israel will strike back, so they can parade all the dead children in front of sensationalist media, all the while acting like it was Israel's fault.

In the most simple terms, you can not have peace when one side does not want peace.

I assume that in this last sentence you change your position 180 degrees, and begin to balance your up-to-this-point insanity by defending the Palestinians and criticizing the Israelis, because if you were still tooth and nail defending the Israelis...

(who lob rockets and run airstrikes against civilian homes, hospitals and schoools, parade dead children in front of media acting like it's Iran's/Palestine's/Egypt's fault, set up concentration camps for Gaza civilians, occupy foreign territory illegally, and routinely cut off electricity and water to starving, dying families)...

... as being the freedom-fighting, democracy-upholding, huggy, fluffy, sugary bunch of underdog heroes that you portray them as, you'd be standing slack-jawed and weak-kneed against all evidence supported by reality.

Hamas sets terms for Israeli truce

Dozens have been left dead in recent weeks by Israeli raids in the Palestinian territories [AFP]

Hamas has publicly laid out its conditions for a ceasefire with Israel, calling for a break in fighting that has left dozens dead in recent weeks.

...

The terms mirrored proposals by Egyptian mediators, who have been trying to broker a truce that would also end rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters from Gaza into Israel.

At the centre of the arrangement would be the deployment of officers loyal to rival Fatah at Gaza's crossings.

Haniya said: "There must be a commitment by Israel, to end all its aggression against our people, assassinations, killings and raids, and lift the [Gaza] siege and reopen the crossings."

A ceasefire deal, he said, should be "reciprocal, comprehensive and simultaneous" and apply both to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

...

A spokesman for Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, in response to Haniya's comments, said there was "no need for negotiations" on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli leaders insist that they will not negotiate with Hamas, which the West has labeled a "terrorist" organisation.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B09...F2E52693830.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7292083.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7293498.stm

Both governments are terrorist, both sides have committed illegal acts of aggression, but the bottom line is, as I have been saying repeatedly, Palestine wants peace and Israel wants to continue fighting. This is why the UN has condemned Israel's actions in the conflict, and this is why they hold the greater culpability.

Regarding the recent truce developments, it's true that months ago Israel started the peace agreements, but here's the catch. Israel's terms were that they get to continue occupying Palestinian territory militarily, which means that they get to legitimately continue the UN-condemned human rights atrocities. In the here and now, Hamas are the ones offering truce, on the condition that both sides stop fighting.

Edited March 17, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[gaia.plateau]

Makes them worse than baby-eating monsters. Makes them the lowest form of human trash to be walking the planet.

I'm surprised you refer to them as human. Why not just put them all in ghettos and camps and make them wear symbols to identify their ethnicity? Then you can detain children, women, and old men without reason or trial, torture them, and work them to death.

Oh wait, the Israelis beat you to that...

I guess it's true that you become what you hate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/637293.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN17629871
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9310...ael-arafat.html
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14043
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/warsaw-ghet...centration-camp
http://egyptianpows.net/1967/deny-and-lie/
http://www.igloo.org/terrorism/gazabloc

"Israel is the only country on earth where torture and ill-treatment are legally sanctioned. The Committee must send a clear message that such practices are a flagrant violation of the Convention and their continued use will not be tolerated."

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MD...50311998en.html

Although Israel stepped up its roundups after the start of the intifada in December, 1987, the practice of detaining Palestinians without charge for renewable periods goes back decades.

...

A letter from inmates spirited out of the camp by the Palestinian rights group, Al Haq, described "a war of starvation, thirst, and humiliation, and a policy of physical and psychological destruction." Sworn affidavits of mistreatment abound, but rarely are they picked up by the US mainstream media.

...

Since 1967, over half a million detentions and arrests have been recorded within occupied Palestine by the Palestine Human Rights data bank. Compared to South African arrests since the issuance of the emergency decree in 1986, arrests of Palestinians are seven times greater since the start of the intifada. Those figures are based on Israel's own estimates. Palestinian estimates of arrests are double the Israeli figures.

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0689/8906021.htm

More than 300 Palestinian civilians continue to rot in Jewish concentration camps under this Israeli "law." No proof of any accusation against them needs to be offered. It is simply enough that they are Palestinians. Their race signifies that they can be incarcerated perpetually by the Israelis.

http://www.revisionisthistory.org/palestine23.html

"The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure."

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."

By the way, if you or anyone else falters at being able to continue defending the militant Zionists in the face of reality, and would like to resume attacking my character by calling me biased, dishonest, hateful or loony, PM me and I'll send you the essay that I'm 3/4 done criticizing militant Islamic fundamentalists for corrupting politics with religion in the Middle East, creating divisions within Islam, and basically being insane. It's going to be terrible because I will have written it in less than 5 hours, but it's only 6 pages so you won't have to endure it for long. Edited March 17, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[Johnny_D]

Why not just post it your essay?

Problem here Gaia is that there is enormous propganda on both sides. It's just more fashionable to be anti israeli.

A point to ponder in an interview given some years ago by the director of the film 'Dogma' when asked if he would like to make a sequal.

He said he'd love to make one surrounding islam, but feared for his life should be do it.

I think you should come and live in europe where islamic's are creating merry hell left right and centre Gaia. Then talk of balance and peace.

JD

[gaia.plateau]

Why not just post it your essay?

Sure ~ the plan is to finish it in the next 4 hours, get 4 more hours of sleep, wake up, hand it in, get ready for my party, smoke and drink my face off for 10 hours, and pass out. so if I don't post it by noon (GMT - 6:00) expect it the following day.

It's just more fashionable to be anti israeli.

I would disagree... doesn't the mass media in America, this thread included, prove the opposite? Look at the talking heads in the US, on both partisan sides. R) Bill O'Reilly: fiercely anti-Muslim, R) Sean Hannity: fiercely anti-Muslim, D) Alan Colms: decidedly anti-Muslim, D) Bill Maher: fiercely anti-Muslim, D) Jon Stewart: decidedly anti-Muslim, D) Stephen Colbert: ambiguously anti-Muslim, D) Chris Mattews: decidedly anti-Muslim, R) Tucker Carlson: fiercely anti-Muslim, R) Tony Snow: subtly anti-Muslim, R) Joe Scarborough: decidely anti-Muslim. I could go on but I should really get back to that paper.

A point to ponder in an interview given some years ago by the director of the film 'Dogma' when asked if he would like to make a sequal.

He said he'd love to make one surrounding islam, but feared for his life should be do it.

I think you should come and live in europe where islamic's are creating merry hell left right and centre Gaia. Then talk of balance and peace.

Kevin Smith.

JD I don't disagree, I think that the fundamentalist Islamists are just as crazy and dangerous as the fundamentalist Christians, Jews and otherwise. My point was only ever that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides are just as culpable. Edited March 17, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[gaia.plateau]

God I'm a procrastinating whore.

JD, in the meantime, this is a pretty good article arguing "the case for Islam in the UK" that I found during my research but probably won't end up using. You might find it interesting.

It's by Corine Hegland, and was published earlier this year in National Journal; 1/12/2008, Vol. 40 Issue 2, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

Turning Back Zealotry

The first time that Maajid Nawaz thought he was going to die, he was 15 years old and staring at white thugs in his home county of Essex, England. They were members of C-18, a neo-Nazi gang, and they had their knives pointed at Nawaz, whose skin is brown, and his friend Matt, whose skin is white. (The "C" is for combat; "18" represents the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, those being the initials of Adolf Hitler. C-18 is not known for its subtleties.) Nawaz closed his eyes. The thugs went for Matt instead. They meant to teach a lesson to white folk who mixed with brown.

The second time that Nawaz prepared for death, he was 24 and blindfolded in an Egyptian prison. He had traveled to that country in September 2001 to study Arabic and was arrested seven months later. The day before, a British friend had been tortured with electricity while Nawaz was being questioned. Today, the interrogators had promised, the roles would be reversed. Nawaz flexed his hands. The cloth tying his wrists had slipped loose. Death, he thought, was better than torture. When the blows came, he meant to fight. He tensed his arms, his legs, his stomach, waiting.

Instead, the prison phone rang. The British consul was on the line. Nawaz heard his Egyptian jailers assure the consul that he and his friends, all British citizens, were fine. Yes, the diplomats could visit the prisoners soon. Fists and wires leave tales on the body, and so the danger slipped away.

In the intervening nine years, Maajid Nawaz, an impassioned man with a handsome, chiseled face, lived a life that, apart from a certain excess of zeal, was not altogether abnormal for a young British Muslim. He went to school, married, and fathered a child. He considered himself not a British-Asian, nor a British-Pakistani, nor a British Muslim, but a Muslim, one whose loyalty lay with Allah and whose sympathies rested with the umma, or worldwide community of believers. He believed in the restoration of the caliphate, a just Islamic state governed in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law.

In these beliefs, Nawaz was in the minority, but not a small minority. Young British Muslims, born and raised in the United Kingdom, are more alienated from British society than are their immigrant parents. A survey released in 2007 by Policy Exchange, a center-right think tank in London, reported that 37 percent of British Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 said they would prefer to live in a Britain governed by sharia; only 17 percent of those over 55 said the same. Thirty-one percent of the respondents said they felt they had more in common with Muslims in other countries than they did with non-Muslims in Britain.

Nawaz had simply taken to these beliefs more than most. He had, he believed, a religious duty to give his life, as the prophet Muhammad had been willing to give his life to rescue Mecca and Medina, to the cause of "overthrowing every single ruler in the Muslim world and establishing on the ashes of their regimes one caliphate."

Later, Nawaz would decide that he had been wrong.

British Terrorism

Islam is a recent phenomenon in the United Kingdom. The first influx of Muslims, rural villagers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, arrived in the 1950s and '60s, and made their way into transit and factory jobs. In the 1970s, changes in British immigration law encouraged those workers to bring their wives and families over as well.

The children of that first generation grew up with few bridges between their impoverished enclaves and the British middle class. Today, nearly 60 percent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households in Britain are still low-income; 16 percent of Pakistani men and 20 percent of Bangladeshi men are unemployed. Protests over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in the late 1980s illuminated the fissure between British Muslims and the wider society, but only the detonation of bombs in the 21st century revealed just how deep that fissure ran.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on American soil was a singular event, carried out by foreigners. Subsequent terrorist plots in the United States have been half-baked at best, guided more by informers than full-throated terrorists.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has either suffered an attack or thwarted one every year for the past four years. All were carried out by British residents or citizens; almost all were connected, at some level, to a disheveled, post-9/11 Al Qaeda. There was the 2004 plot to build fertilizer bombs; the four suicide bombers who killed 52 subway and bus commuters in 2005, followed by another four who tried to repeat the attack a few weeks later; the 2006 plan to bomb planes leaving London's airports; and, in 2007, the attempt on London nightclubs and the less-than-successful car bomb at Glasgow Airport. (The 2007 attacks are thought to be connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is a separate organization from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.)

The roots of Islamic terrorism in Britain lie in the decade between Rushdie and the bombs. England in the 1990s offered a free hand and eager audiences to militants from around the world. Bin Laden had a British media office during those years. Northern London had the infamous Finsbury Park mosque where, like a character in a demented fairy tale, Abu Hamza al-Masri, with one eye and a hook for a hand, preached martyrdom.

Disaffected youth flocked to Finsbury to hear such lessons as, "There is no drop of liquid loved by Allah more than the liquid of blood." Attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected "20th hijacker" of 9/11, both took inspiration there, as did one of the terrorists of the 2004 Beslan school massacre in Russia and the ringleader of London's 2003 ricin nerve gas plot. A few London clerics and groups openly helped young men go overseas to fight jihad. British Muslim fighters turned up in Chechnya, Palestine, and Kashmir.

After 9/11, British authorities cracked down on the prophets of violence. Masri and his ilk are in prison or exile. A series of legal changes criminalized the glorification of, and training for, terrorism. The Finsbury Park mosque was shuttered and reopened under new leadership, and the locals who once shunned Masri's fiery speeches to attend prayers at a tiny mosque around the corner have returned. "There were some problems before," a worshiper, Abdul Rahman, said delicately on a recent visit there. "Now, everyone comes. Somalis, Kurdish, Iraqi, Algerian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, all worship here."

Links to Al Qaeda

But decapitating the militant networks hasn't reduced the conversion of militants or the production of terrorist plots. In November 2006, MI-5, which oversees internal security in Britain, said it was watching 1,600 suspected terrorists inside the country; by November 2007, it was tracking 2,000.

Britain's problem, terrorism experts say, has two tiers. First, the Muslim radicalization movements that began in the 1990s continue to find new adherents among a generation angered by the Iraq war. The government has banned some radical groups, but those that stop short of espousing violence still have freedom of speech, and the Internet remains a free-for-all for them. Second, Al Qaeda retains operational ties with radicals in England who want to step into violence.

As the details of Britain's terrorism plots have come to light, officials have found that although the terrorists are homegrown, their instructions, at least in part, come from Al Qaeda's bases in western Pakistan. Pakistanis constitute the majority of Britain's Muslims, and hundreds of thousands of them travel between the two countries each year.

In the 1990s, a few of those travelers -- British authorities have given estimates ranging from 300 to 3,000 -- detoured to jihadist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of those trainees "may be inactive, but some are talent spotters, recruiters, and trainers," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism researcher at Georgetown University. "There is the radicalization, but there are also Al Qaeda operatives and agents in the United Kingdom that are manipulating and harnessing that radicalization in the service of terrorism." The Afghan camps were closed in 2001, but Al Qaeda still has camps and bases in western Pakistan, and at least one terrorist from almost every British plot has paid a visit there.

As a result, Britain's counter-terrorism strategy focuses not only on detecting and disrupting terrorists planning operations, as America's does, but also on impeding the radicalization of individuals from whose ranks terrorists later emerge. The British approach calls for "tackling [economic] disadvantage," "addressing structural problems in the United Kingdom," and "engaging in the battle of ideas by challenging the ideologies that extremists believe can justify the use of violence, primarily by helping Muslims who wish to dispute these ideas to do so," according to the official anti-terrorism strategy document.

That's the hope, anyway. In practice, the Brits are having a hard time of it. Alleviating the socioeconomic inequities will take generations, and it's unclear how much that will help to counter radicalization: Many of Britain's terrorists have come from solidly middle-class backgrounds. As for the war of ideas, nations around the world are looking for effective ways to engage in that battle and are so far finding little success. The British have held "road shows" of mainstream Muslims and supported young, moderate Muslim groups, but the taint of government support tends to compromise the legitimacy of those activities. "We have got to be better at getting a debate going," says Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

But the debate has already begun. The first round went to the radicals.

Who Am I?

Nawaz was born and raised in a small seaport town in Essex. His grandfather worked for the British navy and settled in the United Kingdom shortly after World War II. Nawaz's mother and her siblings went to British schools, but they were among the first Muslims to do so. The influx of immigrants had just begun.

As brown-skinned children in the mostly white British nation, Nawaz's mother and her friends faced individual difficulties, but they were too few to constitute a social problem. Maajid Nawaz, on the other hand, grew up at a time when the increasing numbers of new faces were prompting questions about just what it meant to be British. "With my generation, issues of identity became just as strong as they had been in the post-colonial period" of the splintering British Empire, he said.

He and his crew of cousins and friends had several run-ins with the C-18 gangsters, who had enough relatives on the police force to operate with impunity. Nawaz's friends were swarmed one night by police helicopters and searchlights after leaving a pool hall. They were arrested and held overnight on suspicion of armed robbery: An old woman had spotted Nawaz's brother playing with a pellet gun earlier that day and called the authorities.

The police force of the early 1990s was "institutionally racist," according to a later government inquiry. Because of the thugs and the cops, Nawaz's group made a point of sticking together in public, but they were otherwise normal teenagers. Then, in 1992, genocide began in Bosnia. Like other young Muslims, Nawaz was transfixed.

"Up until that point, I had identified myself based on ethnic lines," he said. Within his family, only his grandmother was religious. If anyone had asked, he says, he probably would have said he was agnostic. In Bosnia, though, he saw "white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims being slaughtered, simply for the fact that they were Muslims. And that made me question who, exactly, I was."

With his black hair, brown eyes, and brown skin, Nawaz knew he was never going to look as European as those Bosnians. If Europe was willing to stand by and let them be slaughtered for their faith, then, he figured, he didn't stand a chance. So he started thinking, "Perhaps I should just consider myself a Muslim and rebel against everything anyway."

He met an activist with Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political group that works, ostensibly peacefully, for the restoration of the caliphate. The group, known as HT, is banned in many Arab nations, but it operates legally in most of the West and has chapters in 45 countries. It views democracy as un-Islamic and so prohibits its members from voting. The activist was a medical student, home in Essex for the holidays, and he had an explanation for the young men's sense of alienation. "Look, you guys," he told Nawaz and his friends, "you're not British, you're not Pakistani, you're not pan-Asians. You're Muslims. Your political identity is Islam, and that's what's been removed from you through the process of colonialization."

It's a seductive message that has reverberated, in various forms, ever since the last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, fell in 1922. It began, as much as any idea with resonance can be said to have a beginning, in Egypt in 1928, where a schoolteacher named Hassan el-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood to reinvigorate Islamic life and, ultimately, restore the caliphate. As new nations were created -- Jordan, Syria, India, Pakistan, Israel -- the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideas spread across the new lands and inspired like-minded groups.

Young, Muslim, and Activist

Nawaz took the message to heart more than most. At 16, he graduated from secondary school and moved to London to live with other Muslim activists. He enrolled at Newham College, where he and other HT adherents took over the student union and installed Nawaz as president. They established dummy groups to funnel money to HT activities, hosted Islamic lectures, and bolstered Muslim identity at the college. Head scarves came into fashion for women, and ethnic segregation gave way to religious separation.

Eventually, a jihadist whom the group brought to campus murdered a student, and school officials expelled Nawaz and the rest of the student union. He went home to Essex, where his furious mother insisted he remain. He refused. She spent the night chastising her son. When, exhausted, he heard her scream and curse the womb that had given him birth, he gave up and agreed to move home, although he commuted to London each weekend for Hizb ut-Tahrir study circles. Two years later, he moved back to London to study law and Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He became a spokesman for HT, lecturing up and down the coast.

Then, in 1998, Pakistan got the atomic bomb. "We got a message from the leadership that HT wanted to send senior activists to Pakistan to establish a chapter there because the caliphate would now have a nuclear bomb," Nawaz said.

Restoration of the caliphate is the core of HT's ideology. The group has already written a draft constitution for the coming Islamist state and has a three-step plan for creating it: First, build a core of believers; second, mobilize general public opinion in support of the caliphate; and, third, when a given country has sufficient public support, induce a change of government through like-minded members of the military and other leaders.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is sometimes called a gateway organization. It is not violent, but its ideology is identical to that of jihadists. The difference is in strategy, not goals.

"They don't believe it is useful at this time to have a terrorist campaign," said Peter Neumann, director of the Center for Defense Studies at King's College in London. "You have to recruit more people first. At some point, there will be a critical mass to overthrow the government, and maybe in the course of that overthrow there will be a little bit of violence." HT propagates an ideology that young angry Muslims, hungry for action, can take with them to a jihadist group. "Members spend day after day watching videos of Muslims being slaughtered," Neumann said. "It's very easy for jihadist groups to say, 'Aren't you tired of the talking? We're doing something about that.' "

Nawaz was never tempted to become a jihadist, though he knows some who did. He believes in the talking. He's also very good at it. Leaders wanted him as a recruiter for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Pakistan, and so he and his wife moved there in 1999. (He told his mother they were on an extended honeymoon.) After a year, the couple returned to London for school; he studied during the week and flew to Denmark on the weekends to work for HT. His Arabic degree required him to study a year abroad, so on September 10, 2001, he moved to Egypt.

Egypt had banned Hizb ut-Tahrir in 1974 after an attempted coup. On April 1, 2002, Nawaz was arrested, and he found himself waiting to be tortured in the Cairo prison. "Egypt is the only country I hadn't been sent to by HT," he said. "Funny that it was the country where my activities caught up with me."

Eventually, authorities sentenced him to five years in prison, four of which he served.

Over the course of those years, Nawaz had a lot of time to think. His fellow prisoners happened to include the leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that undertook a bloody rampage in the 1990s. The leaders had rethought and revised their beliefs while in prison, and in the summer of 2002, they apologized to their victims and published a series of books renouncing the theological underpinnings of their terrorist campaign.

Discussions with those leaders, sessions with imprisoned Islamic scholars, and his own study of Islamic texts led Nawaz to emerge from prison in 2006 with the quiet conviction that he had, most likely, been utterly wrong. "I realized that what I had been taught as Islam was an invented, post-colonial ideology, and that Islam was a religion quite innocent of this ideology," he said. Still, old habits die hard. He returned to England and rejoined HT, serving as a member of its executive committee.

Last summer, he left the group and turned toward trying to undo much of what he had done.

City Circle

In early November, Nawaz was the featured speaker at the Friday evening session of a London-based group called City Circle. A group of friends, all second-generation Muslim professionals, founded the organization in 1999 as a place to exercise their heads and their faith. "We use our brains at work, where we're paid to think outside the box," said Asim Siddiqui, one of the founders, "so why not use them in the community as well?"

Hizb ut-Tahrir tells British Muslims why they don't belong in British society; City Circle demonstrates how they do. The group operates a Saturday school to tutor low-income children of all faiths and a Montessori Madrassa to teach Muslim children the Koran and the Arabic language. In 2002, the group started a campaign to direct zakat, a religiously mandated welfare tax, like a tithe, toward the homeless of England instead of overseas, where most zakat goes.

The Friday evening discussions are at the core of City Circle's activities, providing an open venue for discussing faith, society, literature, and politics. Eighty to 100 people attend each week, more if the topic is controversial. In 2005, when the British government was considering a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir, City Circle invited HT's leader to speak at a Friday session. After Jack Straw, then the leader of the House of Commons, said in 2006 that he preferred that women not wear face veils, he came to talk to the City Circle. The group marked Holocaust Memorial Day by hosting a Holocaust survivor at a time that the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella organization, was boycotting Memorial Day activities.

When Nawaz spoke to the City Circle, he met a spirited audience that was cordial but less than laudatory. Over the course of the previous months, he had begun to detail the theological basis of his change of heart on a personal blog. He had talked to the media, but this was his first public discussion. A host of newcomers joined the regular attendees, and standing room was at a premium.

"I want to start this discussion by talking about what I used to believe in, and presenting it as I would have presented it when I believed in it," he began, "and then discuss the ideas I have come to and why I no longer believe in what I was prepared to give my life for."

The essence of Nawaz's argument is that although Islam guides Muslims in all aspects of life, it doesn't fix a particular form of governance. Sovereignty is a political, not a religious, concept. Calls for an Islamic state or the restoration of the caliphate are rooted in a false interpretation of the Koran. "We don't need notions of an Islamic state," he says. "A state is a state." He calls those who believe that sovereignty belongs to God, as he once did, Islamists.

"Islam is now part of the British mosaic, and so everything I am now in front of you is British," he told the City Circle audience. "The fact that I eat halal is British. The fact that I pray is British. The fact that my wife, sitting here, covers her head is British. In the debate about the identity [of Britain], we have an equal stake. But that can only come about by calling ourselves British Muslims and not running away from that. We have to seek solutions in the institutions that exist in our country. I don't believe in minority politics, where we only get involved in those issues that Islam defines. We have to get involved in politics as British citizens who have the welfare of society in our hearts, guided by the principles of Islam."

Nawaz is scarcely the first person to come to these conclusions. The British Home Office's Community Cohesion unit would embrace every one of his tenets. Eleven Muslims serve in Parliament, as compared with one in the U.S. Congress, and the national media in Britain include many Muslim journalists and pundits. City Circle was itself founded on the idea that its members have a unique contribution to make to British society.

But Nawaz is trying to reach another audience. He wants to talk to those who believe that religion and politics are one and the same. Some of those others attended the November discussion. He was, they challenged him that night, playing into the hands of people who oppress Muslims by demonizing Hamas and other Islamist movements for self-determination. "You say there's a spectrum of Islamists, but you only talked about HT and jihadists," one woman complained. "Everything you have said is said by Islamists themselves."

She garnered applause. Nawaz's response did not.

"If that's what Islamists say, that's a good thing," he said. "But I don't meet too many people like that."

Going Forward

"Much of the audience was [incremental] Islamists," Nawaz said later, reflecting over a cup of coffee. "They subscribe to Islamist ideology, but their strategy is of working within the regimes, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. HT is revolutionary Islamists, working from outside the regime. But they all share the same ideology."

Over the past year, a number of British Islamists from HT and other groups have publicly repudiated their former beliefs. One, Ed Husain, wrote a book about his experiences, The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left, which has become a touchstone for the country's discussion of radicalism. Another, Shiraz Maher, took BBC reporters to Bradford, a city in the north of England, to demonstrate how susceptible teenagers are to radicalism. He walked the teens through a logical progression from their Islamic faith, to their solidarity with Muslims around the world, to the conclusion that killing British soldiers in Iraq was acceptable because their identity as Muslims took precedence over their identity as Brits.

The teens quickly rejected that idea, returning to the notion that Islam isn't spread by the sword, but it was the first time that anyone had asked them to critically analyze an extremist proposition. "Clearly, they've never had to think their way through this before," Maher said. "I'd like this discussion to take place in every classroom."

British mosques tend to shy away from national politics, and British schools are ill-equipped to engage students in discussions of faith and society. Radical groups have stepped into the vacuum, but Nawaz and the other former Islamists are preparing to join them there. They're forming a think tank to counter Islamist ideology by advancing orthodox Islam and political pluralism. Wealthy Arab businessmen have funded the effort, and they've secured offices in central London and plan to publicly launch it in a month.

"Counter-Islamism can only come from adherent Muslims who understand Islam and Islamism," Nawaz said. "Islamists are motivated ideologically. Good policy or bad policy doesn't matter to them: Because it's not God's policy, they have a problem with it. We need people who can refute that ideology and demonstrate that it's not God's word."

Policy does matter, of course. Government actions, such as the Iraq war and some of Britain's counter-terrorism laws, can and do provide oxygen to radical recruitment. But changing policies won't change the mind of Islamists, Nawaz says, because they evaluate policies not according to their outcomes but according to what they believe to be the dictates of God.

The path that the former Islamists have set for themselves is not an easy one. Their notion is that this is the world that God has provided and it is up to you and your fellow citizens to agree on how to make it a better place. That's a harder sell than the idea that God has planned a better life for you if you will only follow his blueprints. Nawaz and his colleagues have lost friends, been called traitors, and received death threats.

But they're not the first ones to travel down that path. Nawaz counts the only well-known Muslim radical ever raised in America, Malcolm X, among his heroes. In the teachings of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm found an explanation for the racism and poverty that oppressed African-Americans. He rose rapidly through the ranks, preaching black identity and the devilry of the white man and then, 12 years later, left the Nation and converted to orthodox Islam.

"He was with a movement which he then renounced, and was considered a traitor by the very people he had led," Nawaz said. "The same thing is happening to me." He paused, and then added, "It's very important to say, though, that he was a great man and I am not. I'm just somebody who is trying to correct the errors of my ways."

Islam in Britain

* The native-born, second-generation British Muslims feel more alienated from society than do their parents.

* Britain has seen either a terrorist attack or the thwarting of an attack every year for the past four years.

* The ideological and personal journey of one British Muslim helps explain the rise, and maybe fall, of Islamic radicalism.

~~~~~~~~

By Corine Hegland

Edited March 17, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[Johnny_D]

*PHEW*!

That was some reading Gaia. I probably only really understood parts of it, and i'm confused as to what [If any] conclusions it was trying to draw...

He believed in the restoration of the caliphate, a just Islamic state governed in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law.

Which is basically what is happening in the uk (Kinda, in a very roundabout way) As for C-18 activities that's quite possible, especially is southern essex [East London]. However C-18 are kinda redundant as we have the activities of The BNP (British National Party) In a legitimate position*

Interesting article though - but still unclear what it's trying to drive at.

JD

* - Not a support of this group, They hate anyone who's not white anglo-saxon [Which I am]

[TheScotsman]

One has to ask themselves just what meaning sharia has when it's forced. I can understand living a certain way because that is what your religious beliefs require, but once it crosses that line between a choice, and something you do because the other choice is getting your head hacked off by some barbarian with a rusty knife, then it's only meaning is to oppress, and terrorize people.

The statement "a just Islamic state governed in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law" is so utterly stupid it should pe pointed out once again.

Just what is "just" aboout forcing some garbage upon any person that does not want it? What is just about banning people from doing, wearing, saying, eating what they want because any one's religion says different.


That is exactly why Islam is not just, and why it should be wiped from the face of the earth, Do onto them as they would do to you... and be sure to do it first.

[Muhammad]

That is exactly why Islam is not just, and why it should be wiped from the face of the earth, Do onto them as they would do to you... and be sure to do it first.

I think you're getting confused with Islam and the behaviour of some muslims. You say "Do onto them as they would do to you" go back in history when the muslims actually had some authority on the planet and look at the way they behaved onto other communities and how they treated other faiths, so yeah maybe I agree with you in that sense.

In India when the muslims ruled as the Mughals they banned the killing of cows not because it's aganst Muslim faith but because it was a sacred animal to Hindus.

You're comments do not really help and may offend people. Edited March 19, 2008 by Muhammad

[gaia.plateau]

Context
- Jews, specifically radical fundamentalist Zionists are righteous upholders of justice, persecuted and marginalized by the malnourished Arabs they torture and murder.
- Christians, specifically radical fundamentalist Evangelicals are doing God's work on earth and should take world leadership and do what Jesus would do by killing all the terrorists, a.k.a. Muslims and gays.

"[Islam is not just and] should be wiped from the face of the earth".

On behalf of HookahForum, thank you for removing all possible credibility from yourself, so as to alleviate potential confusion in the future.

One has to ask themselves just what meaning sharia has when it's forced. I can understand living a certain way because that is what your religious beliefs require, but once it crosses that line between a choice, and something you do because the other choice is getting your head hacked off by some barbarian with a rusty knife, then it's only meaning is to oppress, and terrorize people.

The statement "a just Islamic state governed in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law" is so utterly stupid it should pe pointed out once again.

Just what is "just" aboout forcing some garbage upon any person that does not want it? What is just about banning people from doing, wearing, saying, eating what they want because any one's religion says different.


That is exactly why Islam is not just, and why it should be wiped from the face of the earth, Do onto them as they would do to you... and be sure to do it first.

Edited March 19, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[Johnny_D]

Just a quick one to ask people to keep calm and not get personal. Thanks Bye.

[gaia.plateau]

Just a quick one to ask people to keep calm and not get personal. Thanks Bye.

I think the most personal and 'heated' posts in this thread have been made pages back. All in good fun here m8.

Scotsman, JD, Snoopy, Mush, Camel.

[mushrat]

That is exactly why Islam is not just, and why it should be wiped from the face of the earth, Do onto them as they would do to you... and be sure to do it first.

I assume you have never actually READ the Koran so you don't know what the religion really stands for, you just watch the popular media and base your opinion on the radical elements that get the most press. Thats as bad as basing your opinion of christianity on the Westboro Church:

Westboro Church

It shows that you are just as closed minded and fanatical as the people you condemn and should be treated like ALL violent extremists...hunted down before you do something that gets people hurt.

Remember, Timothy McVey was a good old home grown christian...

An BTW, you better be willing to put your ass on the line to carry out that sentiment, cause if you expect to sit there all comfortable, smoking your Hookah and calling for someone else to be wiped out, you better be willing to get off your ass and do it yourself, otherwise you are nothing but a coward.

And for the record, I was raised Jewish so no bias there...

[TheScotsman]

Just a quick one to ask people to keep calm and not get personal. Thanks Bye.

Just throwing bombs at gaia to get him fired up, I need reading material!

Was not intended as anything more than a fire under Gaia's chair!



As for shooting at people, been there, I left for SA 15 Aug 1990, and didn't get back until 08 Sept 1991. My oldest daughter is a Lt Commander, on-station in the Eastern Med at this very second. I paid that bill already.

[gaia.plateau]

You thought that calling for the global genocide of over a billion people would excite my enmity, and not offend anyone else?

[gaia.plateau]

I need reading material!

Why not just post it your essay?

Please don't judge my academic caliber on this, it's a low-level paper worth only 20%, and I wrote it in only a few hours.

Also bear in mind that it's a paper for a religious studies class, and therefore only touches on political issues very briefly.

We live in a dangerous, complicated era, one likely to become more complex and dangerous in the immediate future. Many have defined it as a time of civilizational clash between Islam and the West, though this theory does not hold proverbial water when examined closely. In the interest of understanding the complexities of this era and potentially mitigating its dangers, what may be necessary is a greater field of study and will to examine what has made Islam a perceivable ‘threat’ to the West. The growing popularity of radical militant Islamism in the Muslim world has been a divisive force, spiritually and socially as well as politically, and these are critically important in understanding how the challenges we face can be met and possibly overcome. Instead of perceiving Islam as a monolithic entity, it must be understood that there are many different camps and schools of thought, fundamentalist radicalism being only one of them. It is an exclusivist ideology, and it has contributed greatly to solidifying and entrenching the hierarchies that disempower women and the power. The radical militant camp not only ignores the spiritual directives of the Qur’an, such as the Five Pillars and Jihad, but directly violates and goes against them. Throughout the Islamic world, the increasing presence of radical fundamentalism has created and nurtured religious rifts and divisions by popularizing spiritual, political, and social exclusivity, and propagating revivalist interpretations of Islam which are in direct opposition to traditional teachings.

This paper will usefully refer to the Islamic movement toward militant radicalism primarily as ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, as it is the most widely understood and used term for it, even though it may be incorrect. The term fundamentalism was originally used in application to Christians who view the bible as an inerrant document[1], and adhere to the core doctrines such as the virgin birth of Jesus[2]. The problem with the application of the idea of fundamentalism to Islam begins because Muslims traditionally regard the Qur’an to be the literal word of God, and inerrant. Those popularly deemed “Islamic fundamentalists” are in verity opposite to the basic levels of fundamentalism, as they fight to defend not the inerrancy of the Qur’an but for political motives[3]. Having made this distinction, in the interest of simplicity and brevity this paper will commence in using the veritably incorrect terminology of the masses.

At its most basic level, it is fair to call Islamic fundamentalism a social perversion in that it intrinsically is a conjecture of religious and political ideology and objective. This dual nature of Islamic fundamentalism makes it difficult to support as a positive force, and similarly difficult to criticize it as a negative force[4]. To support it politically as a Muslim means to defy or at least neglect major tenets of Islamic teachings, such as Jihad, and to support it religiously as a Muslim means to go against society, which has largely denounced radical militant Islamism as harmful and spiritually incorrect[5]. To support it politically, religiously and socially is therefore a paradox. Conversely, to criticize or attempt to mitigate Islamic fundamentalism as an outsider means to approach something ideologically complex, and most have had to challenge its religious and political ideologies specifically and individually[6]. Saliently, this dualism within Islamic fundamentalism sometimes makes it difficult for Muslims to outright denounce it, as they and the radicals hold to many of the same spiritual beliefs, and this is a significant reason for division within the Islamic world.

Pervasive in all Islamic teachings are the Five Pillars, which serve as God’s commandments. In the context of traditional Islam, they are “belief and witness”, in and to the unity of God and the legitimacy of his messenger Mohammed, “daily prayers” while facing Mecca, which unites all Muslims as a family, “zakat” for the poor and needy, which requires Muslims to annually donate 2.5% of their wealth, “fasting” for spiritual purity and solidarity with the poor, and “hajj”, the pilgrimage. Of the pillars, the most important for understanding the rift between fundamentalist and traditional followers of the Islamic faith is the first. Radical militant Muslims carry forth the words of the prophet Mohammed, satisfying the directive to bear witness to Allah, but they do so in direct violation of condition by using coercion and force. In Sura 2:256 of the Qur’an, Muslims are called on to help others to realize faith in God, but saliently that “[t]here is no compulsion in religion: [t]ruth stands out clear from error”.

In direct opposition to this vital tenet of Islam, the radical fundamentalist movement perceives that the rest of the world, monotheists included, live in a state of religious ignorance and must be compelled to realize the truth of Islam[7]. A primary mission of Islamic fundamentalists is to create a ‘new world order’ led by the proponents of political Islam[8], necessarily by their brand of compulsive religion in direct opposition to Muslim teachings. This interpretation of Jihad is that it is the duty of Muslims to struggle not for spiritual purity or justice, but to achieve political goals and spread Islamic fundamentalism through coercion and force. This has created a division in Islam, as it is absolutely contrary to the traditional faith and philosophy of Jihad[9].

From the Arabic root meaning “to strive”, the idea of Jihad in Islam has a wide range of meanings, including an inward spiritual struggle for purity, the attainment of perfect faith, and the outward material struggle for justice and equality against oppression. In today’s context, the word Jihad has either developed or been assigned a violent stigma, apparent in both modern media and modern academia, which has been largely catalyzed by the September Eleventh attacks against the United States by the radical Islamic informal violence organization known as Al Qaeda. Western scholars have largely, if not overwhelmingly characterized the idea of Jihad as a holy war waged by all Muslims against all non-Muslims, as a brutal and bellicose tenet of zealotry[10]. It has been the pursuit and objective of many scholars and defenders of Islam as an ultimately peaceful religion to differentiate between the traditional interpretations of Jihad, and the newly popular interpretations of modern militant ‘Jihadists’

The traditional and most widely understood meaning of Jihad among Muslims is that of an inner struggle against sin and impurity, to put God’s will into all aspects of life[11]. As a spiritual teaching Jihad is crucial to Muslim faith, and the cognitive dissonance becoming more prevalent in the Islamic world between the traditional and new, radical meanings of Jihad is a divisive force. Jihad is an idea and a word that traditionally has meant the fight for equality, but over the past decades fundamentalist forces within Islam have solidified inequality by intensifying hierarchies and normalizing gender prejudices[12].

Traditionally in the Islamic world, women have not been in a position of power, but many schools of thought within Islam, particularly Sufism, have made great strides toward their empowerment[13]. In opposition to this cultural paradigm shift, Islamic fundamentalism reinforces the hierarchies that entrench the status quo and keep the poor and the female marginalized and disempowered. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Islamic fundamentalism, in the context of women’s rights, is the way that it has engendered anti-Western sentiment within the greater Islamic population[14], effectively normalizing radicalism and hindering efforts to distinguish between holistic Islam and its sentiments that continue to deny women access to employment and education[15]. This cycle propounded relatively plainly, is that Western actions in the Middle East have engendered anti-Western sentiment among the few, which has given rise to radical militant Islamism, which largely through the September Eleventh attacks, the OPEC crisis, and other events has fostered Islamophobia and anti-Islamic hysteria in the West, which has greatly broadened those Islamic anti-Western sentiments, which has rendered almost illegitimate and certainly fruitless the endeavour to separate the entrenched patriarchal hierarchies in the Islamic world.

The rise in Islamic fundamentalism and revivalism has created rifts in Islam in many ways, and an important level of this for our understanding is the feeling among many Muslims that their religion, and indeed their very civilization, is “under attack” by outside forces who perceive radical militant Islamists to be globally representative of Islamic society[16]. This has given rise to exclusivist religious leadership within Islam, those who perceive their religion to be in danger and seek to preserve its purity and division by returning it to the seventeenth century[17]. This attitude is encouraged and reinforced by things like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the treatment of Muslim prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and the portrayal of the prophet Mohammed in cartoons.

This exclusive model of spirituality is utilized by Islamic extremists, who appeal primarily to young, impressionable Muslims who have experienced first-hand what some infer as “attacks on Islam”[18], and it is able to gain popularity among many by promising to exact revenge against belligerent modernizing forces. It is this way that radical Islamists have gained a degree of legitimacy in the Muslim world, for its inflexible methods of imposing fundamentalist viewpoints by force and coercion.

This trend has knocked Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, down but not out. Sufism is the most liberal camp within Islam, and holds true to the most core aspects of Jihad, such as the struggle for equality. The rise in Sufism among Muslims, congruent with the rise in radical, political militancy, may be the best, if not the only means of mitigating or resolving the divisive rifts within Islam[19]. The West largely perceives Islam as being a monolithic, hostile civilization that must be fought[20], and efforts for greater cultural understanding and cooperation are being made from within Islam by the Sufists[21]. This means of combating exclusivist Islamic leadership has potential, but it is still greatly suppressed in the Muslim world by louder voices[22].

As a spiritually and socially divisive force, radical militant Islamism has been harmful to Muslim society. It defies many of the Qur’an’s teachings, most importantly the first pillar and Jihad, and simultaneously politicizes the Islamic religion while corrupting Middle Eastern politics with zealotry. Jihad means to fight for justice and equality, but radical militant Islamism has directly gone against these things by entrenching hierarchical inequality and institutionalizing oppression against women and the poor. Can these rifts and divisions be healed? There is very little clarity in the consideration of this question; exclusivist spiritual and political leadership in the Islamic world continues to dominate, while the inclusive movement of Sufism remains largely suppressed. In verity, Islamic fundamentalism is a product, a reaction to Western policies and actions over the past four centuries and especially over the past four decades. Rationally, then, it will likely take some form of reconciliation between the West and Islam to mitigate or resolve these rifts and divisions, before radical militant Islamism violently takes the Islamic world back to the seventeenth century.


[1] F. Volker Greifenhagen, “Islamic Fundamentalism(s): More Than Just a Pejorative Epithet?,” in Contesting Fundamentalism, eds. Carol Schick, JoAnn Jaffe and Ailsa M. Watkinson, (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2004): 64.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, 64-5.

[4] Johannes J. G. Jansen, The Dual Nature of Fundamentalism, (Hong Kong: Cornwell University Press, 1997): 2-3.

[5] Abel Salam Sidahmed, Islamic Fundamentalism, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 75.

[6] Jansen, The Dual Nature of Fundamentalism, 14-15.

[7] Youssef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, (London: Continuum, 1990): 131.

[8] Tibi Bassum, The Challenge of Fundamentalism, (London: University of California Press, 1998): 10.

[9] Reza Aslan, No God But God, (New York: Random House, 2005): 78-9.

[10] Kim Erza Shienbaum, Beyond Jihad, (Bethesda: Academica Press, 2006): 31-3.

[11] Karen Armstrong, “The True, Peaceful Face of Islam,” Time Europe 158, no. 14 (2001): 1-2.

[12] Nyaar S. Javad, “Shifting Islam from Fundamentalism,” in Contesting Fundamentalism, eds. Carol Schick, JoAnn Jaffe and Ailsa M. Watkinson, (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2004): 79.

[13] Ibid, 76-7.

[14] Ibid, 82.

[15] Ibid, 82-3.

[16] Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22.

[17] Akbar Ahmed, “Five Years After 9/11, ‘Dialogue with Islam Cause for Hope’,” < http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=124>, (Accessed March 15^th, 2008).

[18] Greifenhagen, “Islamic Fundamentalism(s), 72-3.

[19] Javad, “Shifting Islam from Fundamentalism,” 80.

[20] Samuel P. Huntington, Five Years After 9/11, ‘The Clash of Civilizations Revisted,’ < http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=124>, (Accessed March 15^th, 2008).

[21] Ahmed, “ Five Years After 9/11, ‘Dialogue with Islam Cause for Hope.’

[22] Ibid.

Edited March 19, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[Snoopy1966]

Just want to point out, Jihad is not what you defined it as, try again and actually try to find out what Jihad means. This is where all you are so wrong. None of you have read the Qur'an or even know anything about the religion of Islam. 4 out of 5 reverts to Islam are women. Islam does not oppress women, people who do not know their religion is what oppresses women. I could go on here about this, does anyone here know how a Jewish man treats his wife when she has here monthly period?? Now that is oppression. She is like dirt, not to be touched or talked to. When I say touched, not just in a intimate way. she must live in separate living home, different clothes, plates, you name it.

Try to define Jihad please in a correct way.

[Scoop]

- Jews, specifically radical fundamentalist Zionists are righteous upholders of justice, persecuted and marginalized by the malnourished Arabs they torture and murder.

lol...can this statement be more bias in anyway shape or form?

radical fundamentalist Jews being Zionists is an oxymoron. radical fundamentalist jews believe that the messiah will return and lead them back to israel thus are against zionism.

The reason I don't like arguing with people is because they blantantly misrepresent everything and never honestly answer anything you bring up:

I told you if you lose a house, no one cares, I told you the bank doesn't care if you eat. But you never really responded to it, yet used a strawman argument talking about them being more poor than here; yawn....

The funny part is...by your logic, America, Canada and Mexico should be given back to Native Indians that inhabited the land. While I do believe what was done to the Indians was unjust, I also believe its done and over with. You can't simply say ok, lets give it back and all the people who live there now go live in a new diaspora?

So after the partition plan, the arabs weren't happy while the Jews rejoiced. Instead of taking what they got, they decided to start attacking jews. Even at this time everyone knew that the Zionists were stronger

Morris writes, "all observers—Jewish, British, Palestinian Arab, and external Arab—agreed on the eve of the war that the Palestinians were incapable of beating the Zionists or of withstanding Zionist assault. The Palestinians were simply too weak."

Then the Arab League started it quest to conquer the land. The Palestinians needed the support of King Abdullah I, however he himself was in talks with both Jews and the Arab League. King Abdullah I himself wanted the Palestine partition for himself at that point...however by 1948 he joined the Arab League due to his prestige in the eyes of the arab world.

Israel declared its independence and was recognized by United States, Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Uruguay, the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ireland and South Africa.

At this point 5 of the 7 Arab League nations went to war with Israel...and lost...and signed an armistice. My belief is that the Jews had no intention of fighting or kicking Arabs out. When the calls for Jewish extinction were made, they were treated like serious memories of the past. I truly believe they didnt want to expel the Palestinians, however after the war started and Arabs promised to kill all Jews, they were forced out of fear and safety sake to do so.

'There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing. That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them.

"[t]he Jewish Agency called on the Arabs to desist from violence, and promised a life of beneficial co-existence. […] Zionist policy was geared to the establishment of a Jewish state with a large Arab minority. [...] It was only at the start of April, with its back to the wall […] that the Haganah changed its strategy and went over to the offensive […]. [T]he invasion by the combined armies of the Arab states on May 15 only hardened Yishuv hearts toward the Palestinians who had summoned the invaders […]. [T]he creation of the Palestinian refugee problem in 1948 occurred against the backdrop, and as the result, of a war […] that for the Jews was a matter of survival, and which those same Palestinians and their Arab brothers had launched. [...] It is quite true, and quite understandable, that the Israeli government during the war decided […] to bar the return of those who, before becoming refugees, had attempted to destroy the Jewish state and whose continued loyalty […] would have been more than questionable.

After the war at the Lausanne Conference of 1949, the arabs refused to negotiate with the Jews because they didnt believe Israel was a state...This was the last hope for the refugee problem.

The whole "Master Plan" explanation is such garbage.

Ugg Boss here. Ill finish later (PS , this section is not done and i will talk more about the refugee problem and causes) Edited March 19, 2008 by Scoop

[TheScotsman]

You quote sura 2:256 as tolerance to other religions, but you do forget to quote 2:193, which is so often cited by the Islamofacists as their reasoning behind elimination of other religions. While innocent enough on the surface, the fundamentalists take it to mean only Islam. How can one believe the book, but not question two completely opposite verses within the same Sura?

"And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression. -Sura 2:193"


Yes, the west does view Islam as a hostile religion that must be fought, but for more than ample reasons. When someone says terrorist I would dare guess the vast majority of the west (excluding some isolated areas, Ok city, Ireland, and the such) will envision a middle easterner. That may have been a result of the fundamentalist crowd, but does not the term "fundamentalist" indicate an adherence to the fundamental principals of the faith? If the fundamentals are to destroy every other religion, (usually while yelling Allah Akbar) I think I should fear it as a hostile religion! After all if their fundamental principals are that hostile toward infidels, how can I believe the less radical (at least at the moment) people are not adhering to the same principals?

Lets look at 9:5
"Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat), and give Zakat {alms}, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."


Maybe the reason we westerners view it as a threat is simply that the deeper one looks at what are the fundamental teachings, the more we find that Islam is not this big happy tolerant family.

Maybe we westerners worry about tings like 8:39.

" And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do. "

Or 9:29
"Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

My translations were taken from text translated by a group of 4 Muslim scholars. All clarifications are part of the translation, and not mine.


I wish I did not see it as a threat, but I fail to understand just how I could take it as anything but. Yes, I have read the Koran, and it scares the hell out of me... no pun intended.

[Johnny_D]

Yes Snoopy. that was relevant 3000 years ago. I cannot confirm I know of any Jew, even Haradic who subscribe to this.

A Lot of the 'rules' of both religions were based on good common sense for living in the middle east at the time.

Can we accept that both religions have oddities that are not commonplace in today's modern world? Otherwise we can just sling stones at each other for the next 1000 years.... sound familiar?

JD

[gaia.plateau]

- Jews, specifically radical fundamentalist Zionists are righteous upholders of justice, persecuted and marginalized by the malnourished Arabs they torture and murder.

lol...can this statement be more bias in anyway shape or form?

It was a characterization of everything Scotsman said so far. And you're the one criticizing about dishonest representation

As the paper says, "fundamentalist" is a frequently misused word, and I was intentionally using it incorrectly in order to use it more usefully.

The funny part is...by your logic, America, Canada and Mexico should be given back to Native Indians that inhabited the land.

Why is that funny? Those lands should be given back. We can go and live on their reserves without access to water, healthcare and education, and see how we like being oppressed in a "free democracy".

[gaia.plateau]

Try to define Jihad please in a correct way.

Didn't I do that?

From the Arabic root meaning “to strive”, the idea of Jihad in Islam has a wide range of meanings, including an inward spiritual struggle for purity, the attainment of perfect faith, and the outward material struggle for justice and equality against oppression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad Edited March 19, 2008 by gaia.plateau