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Ustwo 10-05-2006 05:55 AM

These quotes would be a riot!
 
Quote:

John Quincy Adams on Islam:

"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, [.....] Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST.- TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant ... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men."

(Capitals are in the original.)
Quote:

Winston Churchill on Islam:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

-- Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
I never heard either of these quotes until yesterday, and I stumbled upon them accidentally. I've long held the same opinion of Islam, and even then Churchill knew what I came to believe that it is only our technological superiority which has kept Islam at bay since their expansion into Spain and Eastern Europe was halted.

Now these are two men whos lives I hold in high regard. Its been long my personal belief that Churchill is the most important man, to Western Civilization, of the 20th century. I think their opinions are worth listening to.

The very interesting thing about both these quotes is that Israel did not exist yet. I'd like you all to think about it. Israel is the focus of this conflict apparently, yet, long before Israel was born out of the ashes of WWII, two of the greatest leaders of their time had the above thoughts on Islam.

So for those of you who think this is all about Israel and not part of a bigger clash of cultures, where did these men go wrong in their assessment?

Sun Tzu 10-05-2006 09:21 AM

It doesnt even have to be an Israel issue. I'll play Devil's advocate here because you know someone has to.

The linage of Hagar? Well thats an interesting story in itself. Infact I think that story which was written by a human is the base for many of the problems we see today. God gives Abraham's wife permission to allow him to sleep with her handmaiden, turns around and years later allows her to get pregnant. This leaves 2 offspring each with a different mother. God in his infinate wisdom states the Hebrew child will be ruler supreme and the Egyptian and his offspring will be the ass of man. People actually took that as reality.

It certainly pays if you lucky enough to be born Hebrew right. Im suprised it took as long as it did for an Arab to write their own mythology. The irony of all of this is these "stories" shape politics in this day and age.

In the times Ive been to the Holy Land I met many Palestinians who were Christians.

Ive read some of the Koran and the Old Testament is every bit as violent. I prefer Homer to the both of them.

Thanks for the quotes I had never read them either.

djtestudo 10-05-2006 01:30 PM

The problem with quotes like these is that they are nothing more then unintended hypocrisy.

I'm sure they believe what they said, but if you were to remind them that Yahweh "gave" Palestine to the Hebrews, and both assisted and looked the other way as they exterminated the other tribes in the area, and then fought with and killed each other, Messers Adams and Churchill would act as though nothing was wrong.

They speak what they were taught. I don't blame them for it, but I also don't take it as truth, any more then Theodore Roosevelt's beliefs in Anglo-Saxon dominance.

Ustwo 10-05-2006 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djtestudo
The problem with quotes like these is that they are nothing more then unintended hypocrisy.

I'm sure they believe what they said, but if you were to remind them that Yahweh "gave" Palestine to the Hebrews, and both assisted and looked the other way as they exterminated the other tribes in the area, and then fought with and killed each other, Messers Adams and Churchill would act as though nothing was wrong.

They speak what they were taught. I don't blame them for it, but I also don't take it as truth, any more then Theodore Roosevelt's beliefs in Anglo-Saxon dominance.

I see so Winston Chruchill, savior of Briton, was taught to hate muslims and was only parroting what he was taught in Sunday school? I have a hard time believing that. Perhaps Adams, as his was of an age before, perhaps, but Chruchill? No way, his words were not based on religious belief but of observation.

djtestudo 10-05-2006 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
I see so Winston Chruchill, savior of Briton, was taught to hate muslims and was only parroting what he was taught in Sunday school? I have a hard time believing that. Perhaps Adams, as his was of an age before, perhaps, but Chruchill? No way, his words were not based on religious belief but of observation.

Because it's impossible that a guy who grew up in the late 1800s might end up with racist or anti-ethnic beliefs?

Just because he was a great leader and saved his country doesn't make his statements automatically any more correct.

Ustwo 10-05-2006 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djtestudo
Because it's impossible that a guy who grew up in the late 1800s might end up with racist or anti-ethnic beliefs?

Just because he was a great leader and saved his country doesn't make his statements automatically any more correct.

I see, so if you think there is a problem with Islam, you must be a racist.

Boy that argument is getting old here.

djtestudo 10-05-2006 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
I see, so if you think there is a problem with Islam, you must be a racist.

Boy that argument is getting old here.

No, but I do think that in many cases even intellegent people are willing to take things as face value and belief instead of showing a willingness to research what they don't understand.

They might believe what they say, but that doesn't make it right, any more then (spare me the Godwin's Law comments) Hitler's beliefs about the Jews were right.

Personally, I would put them in the same side of "misinformed" although with obvious differences in the consequences of the comments.

Paradise Lost 10-05-2006 02:38 PM

Believing what somewhat says just because they are 'important figure' is just an appeal to authority. Sometimes it is a good thing to appeal to, but more often than not the belief a person holds shouldn't be accepted anymore than the average person's belief until it holds up against scrutiny. I believe that's all djtestudo was trying to do here.

djtestudo 10-05-2006 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paradise Lost
Believing what somewhat says just because they are 'important figure' is just an appeal to authority. Sometimes it is a good thing to appeal to, but more often than not the belief a person holds shouldn't be accepted anymore than the average person's belief until it holds up against scrutiny. I believe that's all djtestudo was trying to do here.

Exactly. Thanks :)

inkriminator 10-05-2006 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by churchhill supposedly
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

This shows the man was ignorant in this regard. Slavery of women? not by a long shot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adams?
Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex

again, ignorance prevails. the claim that he 'degraded the condition of the female sex' is so ignorant that it ashamed me that you believe it in this day and age. Adams and Churchhill were of a different era, I wonder if either of them had ever even see a muslim not in a manuscript.
Quote:

and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
again, patently false.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ustwo

The very interesting thing about both these quotes is that Israel did not exist yet. I'd like you all to think about it. Israel is the focus of this conflict apparently, yet, long before Israel was born out of the ashes of WWII, two of the greatest leaders of their time had the above thoughts on Islam.

Israel was born out of the ashes of WWII? What do you mean by that? And the topic of Palestine HAS been used by many muslims leaders to try and give themselves a broad support. It is unfortunate that a noble cause has been confused in many minds by such acts.

UsTwo, I would like to know exactly what resonated with you in those quotes. You mentioned the technological superiority, and I agree with you, but think that the necessary factors for stopping the Muslims should be broadened to include such things as temporary unity under the banner of the pope, cultural differences...many many other reasons, but tech. is definitely an important factor

Seaver 10-06-2006 05:34 AM

Quote:

The linage of Hagar? Well thats an interesting story in itself. Infact I think that story which was written by a human is the base for many of the problems we see today. God gives Abraham's wife permission to allow him to sleep with her handmaiden, turns around and years later allows her to get pregnant. This leaves 2 offspring each with a different mother. God in his infinate wisdom states the Hebrew child will be ruler supreme and the Egyptian and his offspring will be the ass of man. People actually took that as reality.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading in my Islamic History class that it is the Muslims who claim themselves to be decended from Ishmael (from Hagar).

Ustwo 10-06-2006 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by inkriminator
This shows the man was ignorant in this regard. Slavery of women? not by a long shot.

I agree its not slavery in the typical definition. The Islamic ideal for women seems to be based on the paranoid fear of infidelity/cuckolding. Women are not allowed to be with men who are not relatives until they are married and after they are married the only exception is the husband. Its a social chastity belt. The independence of women is limited as well, they are always reliant on their male relatives and therefore always 'under guard'. This can be seen for example in Saudi Arabia where women are not allowed to drive. To make it even more clear, as a doctor you are not allowed to work on a woman of child bearing age as a male. I know this from the Saudi Arabian women we had in my dental program, as well as my female department head who spent time over there. No other major cultures are as paranoid about their genetic inheritance on the planet today. From my readings of the Koran (its easier to spell with a K) I don't think this level of paranoia is justified. Yes women are very much second hand citizens, but they are in the old Testament as well, and I view this is merely a cultural quirk using Islam to justify it. Interestingly the idea that faithful Muslims (males) will be attended by virgins of unparalleled beauty in the afterlife is throughout the Koran, to the point I think there was something of an obsession with sex at the time of its writing. This plus the obsessive cloistering of breeding age women makes me wonder what the culture was like prior to Islam among the common people.

You know this had not struck me prior to writing this but Mohammed was a crafty guy. He set up a system which guaranteed warriors had a motive for conquest, and a very basic, instinctive motive. Let me explain....

1. 'Casual' sex was made difficult among young men (and women but thats not an issue).
2. The Koran specifically allows for captured slave girls.
3. The Koran states multiple, multiple, multiple times that faithful Muslims will find unspoiled women awaiting them in heaven.
4. Polygamy means that men at the lower rungs on the social ladder may have no wife at all.
5. You MUST fight non-believers, you must never trust them, and if they are stronger than you, you wait until you can beat them. Any horror you inflict upon them is Allah's will.
6. To retreat from non-believers is sinful. Fight and die!

This is really an amazingly simple but effective system. War and conquest is what leads to you being able to have sex, either with captured slave girls, or virgins in heaven. I'm glad I decided to respond to this as I had not seen the genius of the original design until now. Its the exploitation of instinct and religious fervor, and explains how the early Islamic invasions were so successful.


Quote:

again, ignorance prevails. the claim that he 'degraded the condition of the female sex' is so ignorant that it ashamed me that you believe it in this day and age. Adams and Churchhill were of a different era, I wonder if either of them had ever even see a muslim not in a manuscript.
I have, women are second class citizens in Islamic nations. They are treated very well, like favored pets, but still no where near a mans equal.

Quote:

again, patently false.
History and the Koran disagree with you here. Interestingly, while the old testament is very violent, it does not as a rule preach violent expansion but was more the taking of the 'promised land' and maintaining it. The Koran is open ended in its goals and views the whole world as its promised land for the taking.

Quote:

Israel was born out of the ashes of WWII? What do you mean by that? And the topic of Palestine HAS been used by many muslims leaders to try and give themselves a broad support. It is unfortunate that a noble cause has been confused in many minds by such acts.
What nobel cause? As for what I mean by that, it was the modern state of Israel which was born out of the ashes of WWII. The historic state of Israel was invaded so many times that claims to the land are rather hard to sort out at this point. The Jews would be the oldest remaining group who has a claim.

Quote:

UsTwo, I would like to know exactly what resonated with you in those quotes. You mentioned the technological superiority, and I agree with you, but think that the necessary factors for stopping the Muslims should be broadened to include such things as temporary unity under the banner of the pope, cultural differences...many many other reasons, but tech. is definitely an important factor
Islam has become a retrograde force. The reason the Arab world is so far behind technologically is Islam. It holds such a grip on the people that they can not advance socially beyond a 5th century mentality and technology is a danger to the status quo, for example Saudi Arabia has internet filters that would make the Chinese blush. I could go in depth on this, I have before, but most Arab scholars feel the same way. Christianity was the same way, but we did shake it off so to speak (and this was eluded to by Churchill). Our cultural traditions and the framework of Christianity was such that we were able to do so, I don't think Islam gives you any wiggle room to do so without completely rejecting it. Its not even allowed to have an non-Islamic state in the Koran. Western gay rights, womens right, even democracy would all be sinful and worthy of destruction as non-believers. This little factoid has me more worried about the concept of Iraqi democracy than any other factor.

jorgelito 10-06-2006 06:16 PM

Seaver, I second. Sons of Ishmael versus sons of Isaac, all descendants of Abraham is a central tenet to the Islamic and Judaic mythology.

Again, people, Islam/Muslims are not a race, there are plenty of white muslims etc..... the "if you have a problem with Islam you must be racist" is really getting tiring and entirely incorrect.

I think Churchill had a unique experience during the WWI era. I believe he was Lord of the Admiralty or something like that and he was also incharge of the Palestinian Mandate. He definitely would have had first hand experience in that whole debacle. In fact, that experience almost ruined his career. The British handling of the Middle East around that time was ..... pretty much a failure (my opinion). I like Churchill too, but his quotes/writings are just his opnion on things.

I would guess that John Quincy Adams got his views either with the dealings of a young USA with the Barbary Coast, Tripoli etc or maybe he read extensively about the history of that area (which almost certainly would have been biased).

UsTwo, have you read Clash of Civilizations? I like that one (puts on flame-proof suit). I found it to be very interesting. I should probably read it again though for the anticipated riot that;s about to ensue.

I have many Muslim friends and have just recently been there. From my observation, the most "free" muslims were in Israel. Free to worship and live as they please. The Paelstinians were pretty "liberal" too but then again, many of them are Christian. Then there were the Arabs druze (non-Muslim Arabs) that were pretty modern. By far the most shocking were the Saudis. When I was in Egypt, man, the way they treated "their" women.....scary stuff.

In my opinion, Israel is just a red herring/straw man that the oppressive regimes use to keep their subjects off their own back. I got the distinct sense that Saudi etc are more afraid of their own people than anything. Conflict or blame of Israel is the perfect excuse for these regimes to hold onto power and their oppressive practices. Maybe later I will share a story of my experience in an Egyptian barbershop (discussing Mubarek and George Bush while having a blade to my face - a shave).

Thanks for listening.

Sun Tzu 10-06-2006 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading in my Islamic History class that it is the Muslims who claim themselves to be decended from Ishmael (from Hagar).

Yes thats right. I reread my post to make sure I didnt accidently put Issac. That is a high point in my disagreement with the Bible especially the Old Testament. Surely a being of infinate wisdom would have seen the trouble of setting a situation up like this. Almost as if God could stir up some shit and watch all the little humans scramble. The Odyssey is another great story. Zeus shaped lives for a time. The Sun circled the Earth for a time. This story of God intentionally creating a rift and further stating the Arabs will be the ass of man still seems to be dictating policy to this day. Or at least being used a very lame excuse.

Seaver 10-06-2006 11:48 PM

Quote:

He definitely would have had first hand experience in that whole debacle. In fact, that experience almost ruined his career. The British handling of the Middle East around that time was ..... pretty much a failure (my opinion). I like Churchill too, but his quotes/writings are just his opnion on things.
Actually that quote pre-dates the Mandates. That quote was at the same time in which Lawrence of Arabia was stirring up the Arabs to fight against the Ottomans in a revolt. He realized how quickly the average Muslim answered the call for Jihad, and realized the possible impacts of it later on.

jorgelito 10-07-2006 01:10 AM

Ah, I did not see the bottom of the quote. 1899, close but no cigar.

hiredgun 10-07-2006 09:01 PM

In what way is a thread doing nothing but condemning an entire faith a suitable contribution to discussion of politics? What is the political content here?

I don't know whether to be angry or dejected.

I am being completely serious when I say that I am personally, and deeply, offended by your views on this matter. Does it not bother you that you are indicting millions of Muslims who are also loyal Americans and share many of your values?

Are you completely incapable of believing that which anyone who bothers to spend time with the world's Muslims knows: that the vast majority of us love peace and hate bloodshed; we love our families and mourn our lost loved ones; we spend our lives working hard to provide for our children.

The average Muslim does not sneak off to make bombs after dropping his kids off at daycare. The average Muslim does not willingly strap a bomb around his son's waist for the glory of God. The average Muslim doesn't rejoice when he hears that a bus was blown to bits in Tel Aviv. The average Muslim is not a monster.

What is your inexplicable attraction to the idea of an inevitable clash? By what right do you claim to define Islam in contradiction to the beliefs of the vast majority of its adherents?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muslims
"It is time that we Muslims acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the US are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim World. If you disagree, then prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with."
Dr. M. A. Muqtedar Khan

Ed Bradley: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the responsibility... Does not Islam, does not Allah require that Muslims police their own religion and rid themselves of extremists?

Hamza Yusuf: Yes, absolutely. It's an obligation for Muslims to root them out. And I think it is a jihad now for the Muslims in the Muslim country to rid themselves of this element.
CBS's 60 Minutes, September 30, 2001

"Who has the greatest duty to stop violence committed by Muslims against innocent non-Muslims in the name of Islam? The answer, obviously, is Muslims."
Ingrid Mattson, Vice President, Islamic Society of North America [I want to point out that ISNA, along with ICNA, are the two largest and most vocal organizations representing Muslims in Canada and the US. They host annual conventions that draw thousands of families from across the country. They have both categorically and repeatedly stated their opposition to Islamic terrorism. - HG]

"Hijacking Planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood constitute a form of injustice that can not be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts."
Shaykh Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Senior Ulama, on September 15th, 2001

"The terrorists acts, from the perspective of Islamic law, constitute the crime of hirabah (waging war against society)."
September 27, 2001 - Fatwa, signed by:
Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Grand Islamic Scholar and Chairman of the Sunna and Sira Countil, Qatar
Judge Tariq al-Bishri, First Deputy President of the Council d'etat, Egypt
Dr. Muhammad s. al-Awa, Professor of Islamic Law and Shari'a, Egypt
Dr. Haytham al-Khayyat, Islamic scholar, Syria
Fahmi Houaydi, Islamic scholar, Syria
Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani, Chairman, North America High Council

"Neither the law of Islam nor its ethical system justify such a crime."
Zaki Badawi, Principal of the Muslim College in London. Cited in Arab News, September 28, 2001.

"It is wrong to kill innocent people. It is also wrong to praise those who kill innocent people."
Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, Pakistan. Cited in the New York Times, September 28, 2001.

"What these people stand for is completely against all the principles that Arab Muslims believe in."
King Abdullah II, of Jordan; cited in the Middle East Times, September 28, 2001.

"I'm a Muslim. I've been a Muslim for 20 years. I want the world to know the truth about Islam. I wouldn't be here to represent Islam if it were the way the terrorists make it look...Islam is for peace."
Former World Heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali, at the telethon benefit concert, September 21, 2001.

"Those terrorists must be reading a completely different Quran than the rest of us. This isn't about Islam. It's about terrorism."
US Marine Corps Captain Aisha Bakkar-Poe.

"Terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam is like a knife through my heart - that people would practice Islam, but do deeds like what they've done. It's not true faith. Some people twist religion to the way they think."
US Army Captain Arneshuia Balial, a convert to Islam since 1987.

(http://www.islamfortoday.com/terrorism.htm)

The assessments of the two men whom you quote are utterly wrong. That they are men who otherwise have my respect does not change this fact.

Well, it seems I managed to assassinate the thread.

I guess you're unwilling to look the object of your bigotry in the face.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-08-2006 10:40 PM

As I grow and adapt to the current climate I find myself perplexed at the current situation. Let me speak from personal perspective if I may.

Hiredgun, I find your sentiments sincere, and I praise your feelings. I wish I could find them uniform amongst your religion. Saying that I hope does not come off as ignorant or offensive. Obviously a lot of the portrayal does have a lot to do with the selective nature of the media and the world at large. But yet I do not find things so simple.

Take the world at large, in this context the Muslim/Islamic world. Look at the spread of Sharian law throughout the muslim world. I see no good coming from the likes of African Islamic nations, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria. The Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, The House of Saud, Iran, all very problematic. The Balkans? Georgia? The far East? Pakistan? Kashmir? Even in the South East area, Indonesia is marred with problems.

Some here might equate the problem as extremism, hopefully that's what it is. The Islamic world is and has been facing a major problem for a long time. I have no problem saying that it is something innate to the nature of the religion.

I'm sure my having said that will no doubt stir the inference of Christian culpability in the world history, do me a favor and piss off if you try and play that card, it in no way addresses the real issues posed to this current world climate that Islam poses.

We don't find ourselves having problems with historically "christian nations", nations that are no doubt by and large free and democratic.

No doubt we are at a turning point in the grand scheme of world history. Europe is faced with a major problem concerning it's citizenry. To be honest my google skills are not "l33t", so I have a hard time referencing this. However, within this century I have seen figures that have pointed to an Islamic take over of Western Europe. Within generations a strong part of the population will be muslim, here is an example for a reference at this time. http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=60 , http://www.afa.org/magazine/July2005/0705europe.asp

I know links aren't appreciated, but I don't feel like adding that much information to my post. Don't blame this on laziness, for me it's a matter of relevance.

This poses problems as Islam is by and large becoming increasingly militant in the world? Is it just extremists? Where are the rest of you? Are you afraid to speak up?

Perhaps the worst part is reasonable muslims by and large only exist in the "west". But a big problem is the growth of Extremism the world round, and sadly it is no longer being limited to the Middle East; it is growing in the west.

Maybe instead of labeling anybody who sees this growing trend and problem in Islam as a bigot, the issue actually gets addressed. Call me ignorant, but if you think there is no clash of civilizations, I must ask of you what world do you live in, and if you would be so kind could you please point me to the rainbow bunny sunshine.

/endrant
I hope this makes a lick of sense.

hiredgun 10-08-2006 11:35 PM

Let me start this way: your post, Mojo, unlike the OP, is not offensive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Perhaps the worst part is reasonable muslims by and large only exist in the 'west'.

That's not at all true. Several of the people I quoted earlier are among the highest political and religious leaders of the (non-Western) Muslim world. Qaradawi in particular is one of the biggest names in Islamic jurisprudence right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Is it just extremists? Where are the rest of you? Are you afraid to speak up?

A great many of us speak up.

http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=4
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm
http://www.al-islam.org/dilp_statement.html
http://www.freemuslims.org/
http://www.m-a-t.org/
http://www.rayhawk.com/classics/matusa/faq.html
http://www.cair-net.org/crisiscenter/html/cair_ad.html
http://www.islam-democracy.org/terrorism_statement.asp
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=1062
http://www.oic-oci.org/english/fm/11...eclaration.htm
http://www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-heresy.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1690624.stm
http://www.livingislam.org/k/dcmm_e.html
http://www.themodernreligion.com/ter...-imamzaid.html
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...7/195606.shtml
http://www.muhajabah.com/9-11_poem.htm
http://www.islamdenouncesterrorism.c..._of_islam.html
http://www.islamfortoday.com/adi03.htm
http://beirutspring.blogspot.com/200...uld-arabs.html
http://islam.about.com/cs/currenteve...icide_bomb.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4775588
http://www.borrull.org/c/noticia.php?id=34219
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...A9648C8DED.htm
http://www.islamfortoday.com/akbar04.htm
http://www.voanews.com/english/archi...TOKEN=71832657

I would agree that we need to do more. But to say that the Muslim majority is silent is entirely baseless.

Ustwo 10-09-2006 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hiredgun
In what way is a thread doing nothing but condemning an entire faith a suitable contribution to discussion of politics? What is the political content here?

I think you can figure it out. When the body counts across the globe in the name of Islam continue to rise, its a political issue. I find it interesting that world leaders have seen this coming for some time.

Quote:

I don't know whether to be angry or dejected.

I am being completely serious when I say that I am personally, and deeply, offended by your views on this matter. Does it not bother you that you are indicting millions of Muslims who are also loyal Americans and share many of your values?
Not really. If they share my values then they are not of the dangerous fundamentalist mind set that is taking over Islam in the Islamic world. I'm having lunch with a Muslim who shares my values today, I think we will be talking mostly about the Bears.

Quote:

Are you completely incapable of believing that which anyone who bothers to spend time with the world's Muslims knows: that the vast majority of us love peace and hate bloodshed; we love our families and mourn our lost loved ones; we spend our lives working hard to provide for our children.
People are people before they have religion. Your religion is being used as an excuse for some horrific things, and not just isolated incidents but nation wide in cases. Most people want to live in peace, this includes bombing victims.

Quote:

The average Muslim does not sneak off to make bombs after dropping his kids off at daycare. The average Muslim does not willingly strap a bomb around his son's waist for the glory of God. The average Muslim doesn't rejoice when he hears that a bus was blown to bits in Tel Aviv. The average Muslim is not a monster.
I argue the average Muslim has sympathy for the ones who do. Maybe not the average Muslim in the US, but the average Muslim in the Islamic world. If they didn't you wouldn't see rich Muslims giving money to the suicide bombers families in such a public manner. You wouldn't see these murderers glorified on TV.

Quote:

What is your inexplicable attraction to the idea of an inevitable clash? By what right do you claim to define Islam in contradiction to the beliefs of the vast majority of its adherents?
Its not an attraction, its a prediction. I'm not sure it IS a majority who fit the 'Religion of Peace' role, but even if it were say only 10%, that is 179 million for the Jihad. I think its higher.


From the bottom of that website....

Islam For Today has only three photos like this...

http://www.islamfortoday.com/FLMusli...anflagicna.jpg

And sadly umpteen like this...

http://www.islamfortoday.com/Pro_Tal...onstrators.jpg

Looks like that website has a better idea of the problem then you do. Its not people like me, its people like the last photo. Its a problem within Islam.

Quote:

The assessments of the two men whom you quote are utterly wrong. That they are men who otherwise have my respect does not change this fact.
I have seen nothing to prove them wrong. Just you stating a majority are peaceful.

Quote:

Well, it seems I managed to assassinate the thread.
Not at all, it was a needed view.

Quote:

I guess you're unwilling to look the object of your bigotry in the face.
Let me distill what you said here. You said a majority of Muslims are peaceful and I was wrong and gave a list of websites. We have riots in Europe as we speak in Sweden by Muslim youths, the French police want armored cars to patrol Muslim neighborhoods, we have rich Muslims giving money to the families of suicide bombers and a death cult in Palestine, we have 10% of all BRITISH Muslims stating they would not report a terror attack if they knew of one (just think what that would be in say Damascus), we have almost every major hot spot in the world revolving around Islamic separatist or terror groups, and I'm suppose to embrace the religion of peace and think of these murderers are just aberrations of a peaceful religion?

If Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance you should be offended, but not by me or those like me, but by the millions of Muslims who are 'extremists' and causing such suffering in the world. I can only react to what I see happening, and I see genocides, I see the glorification of murder, I see intolerance, and I see an on going war that has only stopped to take a breather.

I'm glad SOME Muslims are speaking out against terrorism, I'm glad SOME think they need to be expunged from the religion, but they are downed out by the bombs of the fanatics, the calls for the destruction of Israel, the seemingly weekly riots in Europe, the genocides of Africa, the persecution of Christians in Indonesia, the bombing in Bali, the guerilla war in the Philippines, the siege of a Russian school, 'honor' killings daily, just to many specific horrors to even mention. I'd love, just once, to see a protest against an act of terrorism of the same level and furor as a protest against a Danish cartoonist, hell I'd like to see more than a handful of people, just once. Instead I'm told a majority are peaceful, and maybe they are, but they are turning a blind eye and seem only worried about what people like I think about their religion, and not worry about what millions are doing in their religions name.

hiredgun 10-09-2006 11:34 AM

I agree that a change needs to take place. I take every opportunity to exhort my coreligionists to help me make this change.

The reason we worry about the kind of things you're saying is because they're counter-productive. Instead of driving a wedge between peaceful Muslims and fanatical ones, and instead of focusing on the violence itself, these ideas conflate all of us, lumping us into a single category and blaming terrorism on some problem inherent in the religion itself.

When you quote that "the essence of his doctrine was violence and lust" and then nod approvingly, you're saying that Islam as a faith is incompatible with modern, liberal values. So you basically invalidate me as a person, along with implying that all the efforts of all moderate Muslims to help steer us back on the right course are futile and superfluous, because Islam itself is evil and must be defeated. The spread of these views makes our job that much more difficult.

I feel that there are two contradictory strains of thought in your posts, one of which I can reconcile with, and the other which I cannot. On the one hand you recognize that non-fundamentalist Muslims exist (you say you're having lunch with one of them) and that the fundamentalist mindset is the problem. You recognize that Islam is being used as 'an excuse' for various reprehensible acts, which seems to be an acknowledgement that Islam itself is not by its nature the problem, that alternative formulations exist and should be supported by Muslims.

Then there's another strain which seems to argue that Islam is evil at its very root. You pull excerpts from the Quran in an effort to prove that the doctrine itself was always corrupt. You pull out these quotes from Churchill and Adams that are really nothing but broad, unfair generalizations. You seem to think that there's no hope, that moderates are nothing but insignificant statistical outliers who (and here's the really offensive part) don't authentically represent their faith. (This is distinct from whether or not we represent it statistically, although on that matter you and I also disagree.)

Edit: Also, I apologize for the 'bigot' comment. It came out in frustration and serves no useful purpose.

host 10-09-2006 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hiredgun
.....When you quote that "the essence of his doctrine was violence and lust" and then nod approvingly, you're saying that Islam as a faith is incompatible with modern, liberal values. So you basically invalidate me as a person, along with implying that all the efforts of all moderate Muslims to help steer us back on the right course are futile and superfluous, because Islam itself is evil and must be defeated. The spread of these views makes our job that much more difficult....

hiredgun, If God would grace me with one tenth of your eloquence, patience, and respectfullness, I would indeed feel blessed by Him!

dlish 10-09-2006 01:22 PM

thats probably the shortest post ive ever read coming from Host.

i entertained the idea of posting to this thread earlier in the piece, but saw it futile in the face of ustwos blatant bigotry. ustwos narrow views on islam and selective arguments, and even more selective examples of muslims sadly make an open and honest line of communication impossible.

ive got to side with hiredgun here as the voice of reason.

Moskie 10-09-2006 02:47 PM

I felt I also had to chrip up here in support of hiredgun. Your post was excellent, gun, and it really represents the level-headedness that will be neccessary, in the long run, to get this world through whatever conflicts are going on against and within the Islamic faith.

I often get the impression that Ustwo's solution is to eradicate Islam, when the real goal should be make sure that views similar to hiredgun's are propagated throughout the Muslim community and up to the religous and political leaders of Islam.

highthief 10-09-2006 04:51 PM

Hows does Churchill feel about the Jews?

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/ish.htm

Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.

And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.

The National Russian Jews, in spite of the disabilities under which they have suffered, have managed to play an honourable and successful part in the national life even of Russia. As bankers and industrialists they have strenuously promoted the development of Russia's economic resources, and they were foremost in the creation of those remarkable organisations, the Russian Co-operative Societies. In politics their support has been given, for the most part, to liberal and progressive movements, and they have been among the staunchest upholders of friendship with France and Great Britain.

International Jews

In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.

Terrorist Jews

The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.

Protector of the Jews

Needless to say, the most intense passions of revenge have been excited in the breasts of the Russian people. Wherever General Denikin's authority could reach, protection was always accorded to the Jewish population, and strenuous efforts were made by his officers to prevent reprisals and to punish those guilty of them. So much was this the case that the Petlurist propaganda against General Denikin denounced him as the Protector of the Jews. The Misses Healy, nieces of Mr. Tim Healy, relating their personal experiences in Kieff, have declared that to their knowledge on more than one occasion officers who committed offences against Jews were reduced to the ranks and sent out of the city to the front. But the hordes of brigands by whom the whole vast expanse of the Russian Empire is becoming infested do not hesitate to gratify their lust for blood and for revenge at the expense of the innocent Jewish population whenever an opportunity occurs. The brigand Makhno, the hordes of Petlura and of Gregorieff, who signalised their every success by the most brutal massacres, everywhere found among the half-stupefied, half-infuriated population an eager response to anti-Semitism in its worst and foulest forms. The fact that in many cases Jewish interests and Jewish places of worship are excepted by the Bolsheviks from their universal hostility has tended more and more to associate the Jewish race in Russia with the villainies which are now being perpetrated.

A Home for the Jews

Zionism offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of the Jewish race. In violent contrast to international communism.
Zionism has already become a factor in the political convulsions of Russia, as a powerful competing influence in Bolshevik circles with the international communistic system. Nothing could be more significant than the fury with which Trotsky has attacked the Zionists generally, and Dr. Weissmann in particular. The cruel penetration of his mind leaves him in no doubt that his schemes of a world-wide communistic State under Jewish domination are directly thwarted and hindered by this new ideal, which directs the energies and the hopes of Jews in every land towards a simpler, a truer, and a far more attainable goal. The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.

Also,

http://www.jewishpost.com/jewishpost/jpn201b.html

roachboy 10-09-2006 07:30 PM

before john quincy thought as he did, john adams (his father) signed the treaty of tripoli (in 1797)
here's my favorite part:

Quote:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html

things since got pretty thoroughly messed up.
in alot of ways, don't you think?

Ch'i 10-09-2006 08:33 PM

Yep, Ustwo, those quotes sure are a riot!

http://www.moodsmilies.com/smilies/sleepy/yawn.gif

...

filtherton 10-10-2006 05:31 PM

Just remember that his words were not based on religious belief but of observation.

ASU2003 10-10-2006 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
You know this had not struck me prior to writing this but Mohammed was a crafty guy. He set up a system which guaranteed warriors had a motive for conquest, and a very basic, instinctive motive. Let me explain....

1. 'Casual' sex was made difficult among young men (and women but thats not an issue).
2. The Koran specifically allows for captured slave girls.
3. The Koran states multiple, multiple, multiple times that faithful Muslims will find unspoiled women awaiting them in heaven.
4. Polygamy means that men at the lower rungs on the social ladder may have no wife at all.
5. You MUST fight non-believers, you must never trust them, and if they are stronger than you, you wait until you can beat them. Any horror you inflict upon them is Allah's will.
6. To retreat from non-believers is sinful. Fight and die!

This is really an amazingly simple but effective system. War and conquest is what leads to you being able to have sex, either with captured slave girls, or virgins in heaven. I'm glad I decided to respond to this as I had not seen the genius of the original design until now. Its the exploitation of instinct and religious fervor, and explains how the early Islamic invasions were so successful.

That is 90% of it. The only thing I would add is...imagine you are living as a poor Muslim in the early days of Islam after it has become wide spread. In order to stay in power, you will have to use force and fear tactics on the general population to keep them in line. Public stoning, beheadings, hands chopped off, and banishment out to the desert were pretty strong incentives to stay in line.

dc_dux 10-10-2006 08:09 PM

UStwo and ASU....have you read or studied the Koran?

I havent, so maybe you can put your references and commentary from the Koran in context.

I'm not a biblical scholar either, but I could cherrry pick quotes from the Old and New Testament that would suggest a similar message to what you ascribe to Islam.

If you havent read the Koran and dont want to take the time, I would at least suggest reading a statement from Jordan's King Abdullah:
We are aware of the dangers and challenges the Islamic Nation is facing today at this difficult juncture of its course. Evils threaten its identity, incite disunity, tarnish its religion and assail its tenets; they attack fiercely the very message of Islam. Some who attack Islam imagine it is their enemy. But it is not their enemy. Others, who claim to belong to Islam, have done gruesome and criminal acts in its name. The message that is under attack is the message of tolerance, revealed by the Almighty to His prophet Muhammad, God's prayers and salutations be upon him, and carried after him by his orthodox successors and household members: a message of brotherhood and humanity; forming a righteous religion that embraces the entire sphere of human life, upholding what is good and forbidding what is wrong, accepting of others, and honouring all human beings.

http://www.kingabdullah.jo/main2.php...d=464?_hmka1=1
You will find many references to the Koran, not in full contex either, but at least from someone whom I would suggest is more authoritative on the Koran than either of you.

ASU2003 10-11-2006 12:21 PM

I don't have a problem with the people following the religion. For hundreds of years, it was used to create a stable society and not let crime get out of control. The police force in 800AD is very different from what we have today, and the religion helped to reduce crime.

My post had very little to do with the Koran, just that you had to follow it or got sent out to the desert. There are other penalties for crimes laid out by the Koran if I remember correctly.

Seaver 10-11-2006 01:05 PM

Quote:

UStwo and ASU....have you read or studied the Koran?
I have. While it's not a message of conquor and obliterate, it definately lends itself well. There are messages to conquor and force others to submit (and humiliate them). Even messages that do not explicitley state to conquor have been interpretted for over a thousand years as so. There is a quote which says, "Seek out knowledge, even in China." So you say, "what does that have to do with it?" Well the Muslims went and did that, and conquored all the way over there. That is why there is a very significant population of muslims in western China today.

filtherton 10-11-2006 03:42 PM

Doesn't the Koran say that you must crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women? Or is that the bible?

Seaver 10-11-2006 05:38 PM

Quote:

Doesn't the Koran say that you must crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women? Or is that the bible?
I do believe that was Arnold in Conan the Barbarian...

djtestudo 10-11-2006 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver
I do believe that was Arnold in Conan the Barbarian...

I don't know if that's true or not, but you owe me a dry pair of underwear.

dlish 10-13-2006 05:17 AM

for those of you who seem to think that by merely reading the Quran and literally interpreting it is as easy as ABC, then you got something else coming. even though you can read it and comprehend its meaning, its not for anyone to lift unbased judgements from. there are rules and sciences dedicated to this art which takes many years to master.

even the most knowledgeable of scholars and commentators in the muslim world on the Quran and islamic texts do not call their own interpretations of the Quran as fact since man is not free from error. they accept their efforts in trying to interpret the Quran as merely that, an effort based on the various sciences of jurispedence based on authentic sources. however, it is their humble opinion.

one such scholar who would be unknown to most here, but is known by virtually every muslim is Ibn Kathir. his works consists of thousands of pages of commentary on the quran. works have been made to interpret his works, works have been done to interpret theirs and so on and so forth. so for someone to just read the Quran and interpret it literally for themselves for their ownself indulgence or to knitpick, then they are doing themselves an injustice.

should your really want to know the Quran, then do yourself a favour and pick up the Quran. Then ask a muslim on their take on what it means, look at it from a muslim viewpoint as well as a non muslim viewpoint. read books from both sides ofthe story, because any text can be interoreted to mean just about anything you want it to depending on what you REALLY want to believe. i'm sure mr churchill had his beliefs skewed by his times and his lack of knowledge of islam, its sciences and its laws.

those that read the Quran literally and knitpick are doing nothing better than binladen himself who's literal intretation of the Quran is skewed in the other direction.

Seaver 10-13-2006 05:38 AM

Quote:

should your really want to know the Quran, then do yourself a favour and pick up the Quran. Then ask a muslim on their take on what it means, look at it from a muslim viewpoint as well as a non muslim viewpoint. read books from both sides ofthe story, because any text can be interoreted to mean just about anything you want it to depending on what you REALLY want to believe. i'm sure mr churchill had his beliefs skewed by his times and his lack of knowledge of islam, its sciences and its laws.

those that read the Quran literally and knitpick are doing nothing better than binladen himself who's literal intretation of the Quran is skewed in the other direction.
Thanks for implying that I dont know much about the Quran. In fact Middle Eastern Studies is my major, and Islamic History is my specialization. I've spoken with Sheiks, muslim professors, and more than my share of Talims. I know the various schools of law and interpretations, and Kathir is not the one you should research for he is not predominant in the regions in which terrorism origionates. If you want to look up religous interpreters, Hanafi or Maliki are predominant.

While there will be undoubtably one or two people point out the difference between Islamic Law and Interpretation, they are all-encompassing. And unfortunately for that, only those Sheiks or Imams who study said law can create fatwas (or decrees) so they are extremely influcenced. Neither of these schools have come out strongly against terrorism, in fact more of their Imams in the regions openly support it.

hiredgun 10-13-2006 07:02 AM

You're sort of talking about two very different scales there. Ibn Kathir is an individual scholar whose Tafsir of the quran is extremely influential. Hanafi and Maliki are the names of two entire schools of thought. The two categories are not incompatible, i.e. no one is an 'adherent' of Ibn Kathir in the sense that one might follow one of the schools, while an avowed Hanafi or Maliki is not unlikely to read and accept the interpretation of Ibn Kathir.

Seaver 10-13-2006 01:41 PM

Quote:

You're sort of talking about two very different scales there. Ibn Kathir is an individual scholar whose Tafsir of the quran is extremely influential. Hanafi and Maliki are the names of two entire schools of thought. The two categories are not incompatible, i.e. no one is an 'adherent' of Ibn Kathir in the sense that one might follow one of the schools, while an avowed Hanafi or Maliki is not unlikely to read and accept the interpretation of Ibn Kathir.
What I was saying is the Imams/Sheiks of the Hanafi/Maliki schools of thought/law stay primarily within the interpretations held by their school. With VERY few of these teachers speaking out against the use of terrorism, and the majority openly supporting it, it says a lot against the notion that it's only a few violent people within the society. If the leaders of the religion openly support it why are we to assume the population do not?

dc_dux 10-13-2006 02:21 PM

Quote:

If the leaders of the religion openly support it why are we to assume the population do not?
Perhaps for the same reason that although the Pope and most priests believe there shoud be civil laws prohibiting abortion, most Catholics dont (at least in the US)?

dlish 10-14-2006 05:51 AM

seaver, i dont know why you felt that i was directing my comments at you. i wasnt. though i dont agree with everything you say, your reasoning can be understood.

however,

my post was really a complaint with almost any lay person proclaiming that the quran is this or that without any knowledge or back up or evidence to prove their point except for their own literal interpretation of words on a page. as you would surely appreciate the quran has many meanings, and jurists have many opinions on every aspect of it. These jurists are the main schools of thought that you refer to (Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'i, Hanbali) - though there are a fewer less known ones.

what i was refering to however, as hiredgun pointed out is not the schools of thought but rather the Tafseer of the quran by classical scholars such as Ibn Kathir. Though he followed the shafi'i school, his work is held in high prestige by all schools of thought and they all accept his authority on the subject. Some adherents of some schools of thought wont accept the opinions of other scholars of others math'habs , but ibn kathir is an exception.

i do think that you are wrong in saying that he isnt predominant in the regions in what terrorism originates. Ibn Kathir studied under Ibn Taymiya and ibn Qayyim in Syria in the 1300's, and is regarded by many as a touchstone for the salafi school of thought. the movement followed by binladen himself.


in regards to scholars not coming out against terrorism, this has been covered in previous threads, but there has been many. sometimes its the good things that muslims do that dont get noticed, and only the bad things that get magnified.

stevo 10-16-2006 11:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Its not an attraction, its a prediction. I'm not sure it IS a majority who fit the 'Religion of Peace' role, but even if it were say only 10%, that is 179 million for the Jihad. I think its higher.

You aren't far off at all:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061015/...esia_poll_dc_1

Quote:

One in 10 Indonesia Muslims back violent jihad: poll

Sun Oct 15, 9:04 AM ET

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday showed.
ADVERTISEMENT

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world.

"Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

"They approved the bombings conducted ... in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam," it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."

While the vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims are relatively moderate, there has been an increasingly vocal militant minority and political pressure for more laws that are in line with hardline Muslim teachings.

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,092 Muslim men and women.

Bombings in Bali in October 2002 blamed on the militant Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah network killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Suicide blasts in Bali a year ago killed 20.

The survey found one in five Indonesian Muslims more generally supported the aims of Jemaah Islamiah -- an armed movement backing the creation of an Islamic superstate linking Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslim areas in the Philippines and Thailand.

In the past, it has cooperated closely with al Qaeda's global anti-Western campaign, but in recent years many in Jemaah Islamiah have focused more on the regional struggle.

Indonesia has had a major attack against high profile Western-linked targets each year from 2002 through 2005. Authorities tied all the attacks to elements of Jemaah Islamiah.

Indonesia is not officially an Islamic state.
Only 18,700,000 Indonesian muslims are of the "violent extremist kind" Everyone relax, its only a small handful and they don't represent the majority.

edit: for the sake of accuracy, here's some survey statistics: Sample size 1,092, sample population 187,000,000. Confidence level 95%, confidence interval 10.22. 1,092 is a small sample size for such a large population. Based on the study, we can be 95% certain that the actual number of "extremists" in Indonesia is between 16,807,560 and 20,611,140.

jorgelito 10-16-2006 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux
Perhaps for the same reason that although the Pope and most priests believe there shoud be civil laws prohibiting abortion, most Catholics dont (at least in the US)?

I haven't heard of this could you please provide a source? Thanks.

Seaver 10-16-2006 12:17 PM

Dlk, I will yield to you on this issue, I am not as well versed in Ibn Kathir as you appear to be.

stevo 10-17-2006 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061015/...esia_poll_dc_1

Only 18,700,000 Indonesian muslims are of the "violent extremist kind" Everyone relax, its only a small handful and they don't represent the majority.

edit: for the sake of accuracy, here's some survey statistics: Sample size 1,092, sample population 187,000,000. Confidence level 95%, confidence interval 10.22. 1,092 is a small sample size for such a large population. Based on the study, we can be 95% certain that the actual number of "extremists" in Indonesia is between 16,807,560 and 20,611,140.

I'll take the silence that followed to be an agreement. Finally we're all in agreement. Isn't that just grand?

Moskie 10-17-2006 10:18 AM

You didn't make a point, stevo. Are those numbers right? Damned if I know. I have a feeling we disagree as to what we (the U.S., whoever) should do about those numbers, but you only left us to assume what you believe those numbers actually imply.

Ustwo 10-17-2006 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moskie
You didn't make a point, stevo. Are those numbers right? Damned if I know. I have a feeling we disagree as to what we (the U.S., whoever) should do about those numbers, but you only left us to assume what you believe those numbers actually imply.

What do you believe they imply?

jorgelito 10-17-2006 10:41 AM

Well, ok. I see that there is a number of Muslims who support terror from around the globe, I think there was a chart published a few months back about it. There also seems to be a large silent bloc that either doesn't support it and is afrtaid to speak up or is underreported, or they are complicit and in silent agreement and support of the terrorists. Or the large bloc may be mixed.

I do find it odd that not many of the Muslim leadership speak out and denounce terrorism more vocally. Yes I did see the above links on some Muslim leaders that denounce terrorism. That's good, I just wish it was more publicized (probably another thread).

I suppose fear is a pretty big deterrent to speak out against the terrorists. It's like trying to find someone to testify against the local neighborhood gangster. The silence doesn't neccessarily mean that everyone supports the gangsters.

Still, I would like to see more Muslims speak out, hold demonstrations against terrorism and for the press to report that as well.

Moskie 10-17-2006 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
What do you believe they imply?

Simply that there's quite a bit of muslim extremists in the world. No doubt.

But in the context of this discussion: Is it because Islam is, by its nature, a violent belief system? Who knows, but you can't deduce anything either way simply based on those numbers. I refuse to let it be proven and assumed so easily.

And, assuming these numbers are "high," this also implies to me that the solution to the problem (whatever that problem is) would require something more intricate than simply declaring that the religion is definitively violent and should be eradicated. It just seems like an oversimplification of the issues.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 11:22 AM

There has to be some correlation attesting to the idea that violence and Islam are related. Otherwise it would have to be one big coincidence that a majority of the worlds issues regarding human rights and conflict are perpetuated or involving of Muslims and/or Sharia law (read: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Iran, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Georgia/Checynia(sp), Sudan, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Egypt, Yemen, and now increasingly Western Europe).

jorgelito 10-17-2006 11:35 AM

Hmm...I don't know if there is a correlation. I believe it to be more corruption and manipulation by bad leadership. Perhaps a corruption of Islam for nefarious purposes is more the point. I don't feel like the leaders of many of those countries represent Islam anymore than I feel George Bush represents Christianity. I think the Taleban are about as unIslamic as you can get with their hypocrisy. Allowing the opium crops, etc. I can't remember but didn't they ban music and dancing but were caught listening to Britney Spears?

I also think Islam is used as a political tool further twisting the religion and blurring the lines. So in my view, it's not Islam that is to blame but rather the people who corrupt it, much like any religion.

Sharia law might be a good debate for another thread so it can be more focused.

host 10-17-2006 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
There has to be some correlation attesting to the idea that violence and Islam are related.....

The same can be said about christian evangelicals in the US government:
Quote:

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/39198.html
......Doolittle's views on the Iraq war are simply bizarre. The conflict, he said, "leads to what the Bible ultimately says": Armageddon will take place in the Middle East. The Bible mentions the Euphrates River in Iraq as the place of prelude to the final battle of Armageddon that will bring about the world's end.
Why don't you stop posting neocon propagandist nonsense...and let this thread die. It is a gathering place for offensive and illinformed commentary. I am embarrassed for our muslim brothers who happen upon some of the simplistic, ill conceived posts here...... I have no more connection to what Mojo_PeiPei thinks and posts than any of the muslims who he accuses have....to others who claim to be muslim, but promote violence.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 11:51 AM

America doesn't act as a Christian actor. American government doesn't act within a solely christian framework. We didn't act in Iraq for Christian purposes, we operated for geo-political purposes. Evangelical terrorism is so statistically small and insignificant, that it is effectively an abherration of Christians or the American population as a whole.

Where is any neo-con propaganda btw? I mean unless of course you consider reality and facts to constitute propaganda.

Ustwo 10-17-2006 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Where is any neo-con propaganda btw? I mean unless of course you consider reality and facts to constitute propaganda.

I posted it so its neo-con propaganda by default.

stevo 10-17-2006 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
The same can be said about christian evangelicals in the US government:

One in ten christian evangelicals advocate jihad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
Why don't you stop posting neocon propagandist nonsense...and let this thread die.

Is the poll I posted above neocon propaganda?

roachboy 10-17-2006 01:26 PM

no ustwo--you posted a sequence of quotes from famous dead guys whose ignorance about islam made you feel as though yours was legitimate. and you bit it from a far right blog that you did not cite.

what was surprising is that while the thread was twitching its way toward oblivion, an interesting discussion happened between hiredgun, dlishguy and seaver. so even here you can see that discussions between opposing political viewpoints concerning islam are possible without degenerating into the idiocy of the present one----where you now have arguments that i take to have been made seriously---though frankly have trouble imagining it possible--that "a percentage" of the world's muslim population "supports" this ridiculous construct you call "terrorism" therefore islam as a whole has some kind of proclivity toward violence.

here is this brilliant logic in another context: only people who drive cars have strapped a bomb to the undercarriage and driven into a building.
therefore everyone who drives a car may strap a bomb to the undercarriage and drive into a building.
to make this appear legitimate, the qualifier gets tossed in that a certain (arbitrary) percentage of car drivers support such actions.

the usual pattern from here would be to generate a whole series of meaningless generalizations about people who drive cars----all of which would be further qualified--sooner or later--with "i know a couple of car drivers and they are nice people.....they are not like the rest. therefore i have no particular problem with car drivers."

the argument now being tossed about with reference to islam is, if anything, even more stupid.

Moskie 10-17-2006 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo
One in ten christian evangelicals advocate jihad?

Here's a twist to that: I'm inclined to believe that a perspective where one is resigned to being at war with the entire culture of Islam is, in a sense, advocating a jihad scenario. Otherwise, these people would be doing everything in their power to avoid it. Instead, we see views such as the quotes in the OP spread around, creating more and more hate between cultures, thus aiding the notion that a jihad is on its way. It serves no purpose but make the chances of war greater, does it not?

That's the impression I'm getting from the convesative side of this discussion, at least. I sense that you guys have abandoned all hope that a war with Islam could be avoided, and are now of the belief that the only outcome must and will be all out war. Perhaps that is the key difference in the perspectives in this thread.

Ch'i 10-17-2006 03:49 PM

These quotes would be even more of a riot!
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by John Adams, letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, US Consul)
"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winston Churchill
All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived – not without reason – that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win. Germany, having let hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. … When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
There has to be some correlation attesting to the idea that violence and Islam are related.

host was right, this thread is embarrasing.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 04:17 PM

I have a challenge to the tilted left, or those of you that view the Islamic world as a mystical land with enchanted chocolate rivers and yummy rainbow gum drops.

Refute what I put forward, and if possible (here's the tricky part) do it without bringing in Christian culpability (also I don't how the Treaty of Tripoli relates as it was ratified with different versions, some without the tenth clause, and was allowed to die after few years time) or the playing of the following two cards: It must be the leaders/corruption or this as all mere "neo-con propaganda". Do yourselves a favor and open your minds on this one, it will be a stretch for some of you, but I have a feeling that some of you are at least reasonable enough to acknowledge the fact that there is a major problem in Islam, that it is not limited to a small minority on some dark continent far away, and it is not getting any better.

Ustwo 10-17-2006 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy
though frankly have trouble imagining it possible--that "a percentage" of the world's muslim population "supports" this ridiculous construct you call "terrorism" therefore islam as a whole has some kind of proclivity toward violence.

'terrorism' is a ridiculous construct...

Before I'd even touch the rest of your post, you must expound on this facinating idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
I have a feeling that some of you are at least reasonable enough to acknowledge the fact that there is a major problem in Islam, that it is not limited to a small minority on some dark continent far away, and it is not getting any better.

You sir are an optimist of the highest order.

dc_dux 10-17-2006 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
I have a challenge to the tilted left, or those of you that view the Islamic world as a mystical land with enchanted chocolate rivers and yummy rainbow gum drops.

Refute what I put forward, and if possible (here's the tricky part) do it without bringing in Christian culpability (also I don't how the Treaty of Tripoli relates as it was ratified with different versions, some without the tenth clause, and was allowed to die after few years time) or the playing of the following two cards: It must be the leaders/corruption or this as all mere "neo-con propaganda". Do yourselves a favor and open your minds on this one, it will be a stretch for some of you, but I have a feeling that some of you are at least reasonable enough to acknowledge the fact that there is a major problem in Islam, that it is not limited to a small minority on some dark continent far away, and it is not getting any better.

I think most on the "tilted left" (or your insulting enchanted candyland) agree that there are many followers of Islam who have hijacked the religion for their own ideological goals, as followers of other religions have done throughout history (sorry Mojo..I dont see why Islam should be viewed in a vacuum).

I think the point that many here have made is that a policy to fight terrorism would be more effective if it were to focus on how to respond to the extemists rather than to continue to attack the religion, which will only result in more anti-west sentiments and ultimately more moderate muslims who feel attacked and may be moved to the extemist beliefs themselves.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 08:01 PM

How does our policy attack the religion? Does acknowledging the fact that they are muslims perpetuating an idealogy spawned from the Islamic tradition make it an attack on the religion? I guess so. Confounding.

Moskie 10-17-2006 08:05 PM

thank you, dc, that's my opinion as well.

Has any of the left here claimed that Islam has a spotless reputation? Of course not. Our contention has been that problems do exist, but the solution is not to make blanket statements and policies regarding Islam. We've seen people in this thread (hiredgun) and friends of people in this thread (Ustwo's lunch date) that represent a level-headed, reasonable side of Islam. We're not sure whether that group represents the majority of Muslims, but we need to make sure those people become the ones in power of the Islamic people, and not the extremists that are currently causing all this trouble around the world.

Another reason we are against the notion of being against Islam as a whole, is that it takes us down a road that has no winners. Here's the only set of events I see that starts with the ideals put forth in the OP:

1. Islam is inherently evil and violent.
2. In order for the world to be safe, Islam must then be destroyed, since it's mere presence brings evil and violence.
3. Declare war (in some form or another) against all followers of Islam, since they are, by definition, evil and violent.
4. Partake in said war, causing mass international instability, and countless casualties.

If there's another set of events that I'm not seeing, please let me know. Because I, for one, find that to be an unacceptable situation. One that needs to be avoided at all costs. My idea for avoiding this is to reject the first statement, then work to get moderate Muslims who are not evil and violent into control of the Islamic community.

Is that so unreasonable?

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 08:15 PM

How are you going to get the moderate muslims to stand up? They don't seem to be willing to do it by themselves, repression and Sharian rule is growning in the (Islamic) world, not declining.

Also, I must ask this question, Hiredgun if you'd be so kind, where are you from originally? Being left to assumptions, it seems apperent to me that you are problem from America/Canada. As such you are not representative of the global Islamic culture; Hiredgun to me would be a dasterdly "westerner" one who lives within the Judeo-Christian realm of the infidels.

matthew330 10-17-2006 08:15 PM

"I think the point that many here have made is that a policy to fight terrorism would be more effective if it were to focus on how to respond to the extemists rather than to continue to attack the religion, which will only result in more anti-west sentiments and ultimately more moderate muslims who feel attacked and may be moved to the extemist beliefs themselves."

And how would you respond to islamic extremism without offending these moderates that you speak of, who at our reaction to this extremism, would become extremists themselves?

It seems to me your acknowledging that "moderate", which I would guess is what you think is the majority, of muslims are ready to start flying planes into buildings and setting up roadside bombs at the drop of a hat.

You're such a racist...

Moskie 10-17-2006 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
How are you going to get the moderate muslims to stand up?

That's a problem for statesmen smarter than myself to figure out. I cannot provide specifics.

I'm inclined to believe that it would be a more desirable task to accomplish than any vague war against what could be the majority of the Islamic community, though.

dc_dux 10-17-2006 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
How are you going to get the moderate muslims to stand up? They don't seem to be willing to do it by themselves, repression and Sharian rule is growning in the (Islamic) world, not declining.

Mojo......Where is repression and sharia law growing...putting aside the fact that sharia law should not be equated with support of terrorists with different ideologcal goals? The new Iraq constitution which the US proclaims as such a victory for the Iraqi people is based, in part, on sharia law.

Moderate muslims are in power in most of the top 10 muslim countries and are standing up, with the exception of Iran, which doesnt have the support of the people. The goverments of Indonesia, Pakistan, India (not a muslim government), Turkey, Egypt, Algeria (not moderate, but cracking down on suspected terrorists), Morroco are all working with the US to some extent to fight terrorism, as are the smaller muslim nations of Jordon, Kuwait, and others.

And Mathew, your "racist" comment is not worthy of response.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 09:03 PM

"Moderate" is the word eh?

Familiar, this is, I have seen this before... Ustwo addressed that here http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ight=Indonesia, but for arguments sake....
Quote:

Persecution of Christians in Sudan

There is an abundance of evidence since the early 1990s of oppression and persecution of Christians, including by Sudan's own Sudan Human Rights Organization, which in mid-1992 reported on forcible closure of churches, expulsion of priests, forced displacement of populations, forced Islamisation and Arabisation, and other repressive measures of the Government. In 1994 it also reported on widespread torture, ethnic cleansing and crucifixion of pastors. Pax Christi has also reported on detailed cases in 1994, as has Africa Watch. Roman Catholic bishop Macram Max Gassis, Bishop of El Obeid, also reported to the Fiftieth Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, in February 1994 on accounts of widespread destrucution of hundreds of churches, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, concentration camps, genocide of the Nuba people, systematic rape of women, enslavement of children, torture of priests and clerics, burning alive of pastors and catechists, crucifixion and mutiliation of priests. The foregoing therefore serve to indict the Sudanese Government itself for flagrant violations of human rights and religious freedom.

In addition, it is estimated that over 1.5 million Christians have been killed by the Sudanese army, the Janjaweed, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984.

It should also be noted that Sudan's several so-called civil wars (which often take the form of genocidal campaigns) are often not only or purely religious in nature, but also ethnic, as many black Muslims, as well as Muslim Arab tribesmen, have also been killed in the conflicts. It is difficult to ascertain how many deaths are due to the conflict and how many are due to the numerous famines which have affected Sudan, costing thousands of lives.
[edit]

Persecution of Christians in Pakistan
[edit]

Blasphemy Laws

In Pakistan, 1.5% of the population are Christian. Pakistani law mandates that any "blasphemies" of the Quran are to be met with punishment. On July 28, 1994, Amnesty International urged Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto to change the law because it was being used to terrorize religious minorities. She tried but was unsuccessful. However, she modified the laws to make them more moderate. Her changes were reversed by the Nawaz Sharif administration which was backed by Islamic Fundamentalists.

Ayub Masih, a Christian, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in 1998. He was accused by a neighbor of stating that he supported British writer, Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Lower appeals courts upheld the conviction. However, before the Pakistan Supreme Court, his lawyer was able to prove that the accuser had used the conviction to force Mashi's family off their land and then acquired control of the property. Masih has been released [5].

On September 22, 2006, a Pakistani Christian named Shahid Masih was arrested and jailed for allegedly violating Islamic "blasphemy laws" in Pakistan. He is presently held in confinement and has expressed fear of reprisals by Islamic Fundamentalists[6].
[edit]

Attacks on Pakistani Christians by Islamists

On October 28, 2001 in Lahore, Pakistan, Islamic militants killed 15 Christians at a church. On September 25, 2002 two terrorists entered the "Peace and Justice Institute", Karachi, where they separated Muslims from the Christians, and then executed eight Christians by shooting them in the head.[citation needed]

On September 25, 2002, unidentified gunmen shot dead seven people at a Christian charity in Karachi's central business district. They entered the third-floor offices of the Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) and shot their victims in the head. All of the victims were Pakistani Christians. Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said the victims had their hands tied and their mouths had been covered with tape. Pakistani Christians have alleged that they have "become increasingly victimised since the launch of the US-led international war on terror."[7]

In November 2005, 3,000 militant Islamists attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and United Presbyterian churches. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf Masih. The attacks were widely condemned by some political parties in Pakistan[8]. However, Pakistani Christians have expressed disappointment that they have not received justice. Samson Dilawar, a parish priest in Sangla Hill, has said that the police have not committed to trial any of the people who were arrested for committing the assaults, and that the Pakistani government did not inform the Christian community that a judicial inquiry was underway by a local judge. He continued to say that Muslim clerics "make hateful speeches about Christians" and "continue insulting Christians and our faith".[9].

In February 2006, churches and Christian schools were targeted in protests over the publications of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in Denmark, leaving two elderly women injured and many homes and properties destroyed. Some of the mobs were stopped by police[10].

In August 2006, a church and Christian homes were attacked in a village outside of Lahore, Pakistan in a land dispute. Three Christians were seriously injured and one missing after some 35 Muslims burned buildings, desecrated Bibles and attacked Christians[11].

Based, in part, on such incidents, Pakistan was recommended by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in May 2006 to be designated as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC) by the Department of State.[12].
[edit]

Attacks on Christians by Islamists in Indonesia

Religious conflicts have typically occurred in western New Guinea, Maluku (particularly Ambon), and Sulawesi. The presence of Muslims in these regions is largely due to Suharto's transmigrasi plan of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia. The following list is far from comprehensive:

1998 - 500 Christian churches burned down in Java.

November, 1998 - 22 churches in Jakarta are burned down. 13 Christians killed.

Christmas Day 1998 - 180 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

Easter 2000 - 800 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

May 23, 2000 - Christians fight back against a Muslim mob. 700 people die.

June, 2001 - the Laskar Jihad declares Jihad against Christians. Muslim citizens are recruited by the thousands to exterminate Christians.

May 28, 2005 - A bomb is exploded in a crowded market in Tentena, killing 28. This marks the highest death toll due to bombing after the devastating attacks in Bali.[13]

On October 29, 2005 three school girls were found beheaded near Poso. The girls, students at Central Sulawesi Christian Church, were killed by six unidentified assailants while on their way to class.
Again Pakistan's cooperation is only due to the regime's preference, a defacto dictator, who has been the victim of 3 assassination attempts, who has entirely to many problems with Islamists in the military, who exerts little to no control in the Taliban sympathetic/controlled Pushtan region. This is a country that was blowning up churches after erroneous news stories about Quran desecration at Gitmo. Musareff is only as moderate and helpful as it suits him, on that note, I wonder where Bin Laden is???

India- Historical reference fact, where have the bloodiest religious wars ever been fought? When? What religions? Case in point India/Pakistan, four wars this century 47', 65', 71', 98', Moslems and Hindu's. Building off that seems to me problems and Kashmir still exist, also this doesn't take into account the problems in Bangladesh's formation. I wonder why they might want to fight in our war on terror? because they have been dealing with Islamic extremists for 60+ years!

Turkey- let's ask the Kurds what they think, also I am a little disconcerted about their whole reaction to the Pope's comments awhile back. They've seem to been dealing with their own inner problems with terrorism, some destructive acts, I wonder if it is not a discontent population or Al Qaeda?

Egypt- Ustwo made a good point in the linked above thread... they are the second biggest recipent of America aid. Similar to other countries they also have serious internal problems with Islamic extremists, seems to me a certain leader of theirs was assassinated a few decades back...

Also your point about Iraq and Sharian law bring up its own plethora of issues to deal with. Namely that Iran is starting to excert massive influnence in Iraq, don't know if you know but Iran is Shiite, so is majority of Iraq, there was a war that killed a million people, Saddam was secular ran off the clerics to Iran, they are back, there are ones like Al- Sadr one of the biggest problems we are facing. That's a lazy detailed commentary. I think most people monitoring the situation in Iraq, see it has a problem that Sharia law is being adapted, especially because of the situation with Iran.

dc_dux 10-17-2006 09:38 PM

I'm not ignorant of the internal killings and the unrest stirred up by the extemists in these countries, but the fact is that these governments are moderate (as are the majority of their muslim population) and are working with the international community and particlulary the west, to strengthen their response to these internal extremists and to institute political and judicial reforms, albeit not as quickly or as succesfully as we would like.

If we want them to continue, its in our interest not to inflame their more moderate muslim populations with policies like attacking a sovereign muslim country that did not pose a direct threat to us and where our actions killed thousands of innocent muslim civilians, locking up (some for years at a time now with no outside contact) and torturing "suspected" muslim terrorists with no opportunity to prove their innocence, making references to islamofacists, etc.

Edit:
I agree with you on Iraq/Iran connection . The result of our invasion was to create a scenario where SCIRI and Dawa (the two shia sectarian political groups with connections to Iran) would be in control of the government and would strengthen ties to Iran.

Iran, Iraq to strengthen security, intelligence ties


I think it was Howard Dean who predicted this before the war :)

Ch'i 10-17-2006 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
I have a challenge to the tilted left, or those of you that view the Islamic world as a mystical land with enchanted chocolate rivers and yummy rainbow gum drops.

Indeed you are an optimist. I would love to engage in such a challenge, but such an answer would fall upon deaf ears. No matter what is said, aside from supporting the right, it will be either ignored (thanks Ustwo), or viewed through bias. A majority of the right holds its views as incontrovertible, and will not listen to our "leftist drivel", or anything sharing an inclination towards that view's favor. If care towards incessantly being right (in literal meaning of the word) was shunned, then I'd be willing. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Edit: Screw it. I'll give it a try.

Mojo_PeiPei 10-17-2006 09:57 PM

You would engage in such a challenge but you would loose. Any answer I ever encounter comes down to me being a bigoted xenophobe and not once addresses the issue at hand. Don't think that I have a monopoly on excluding perspective. Please give me your leftist drivel by the way, I would welcome it, you might find I am not so unreasonable when presented with facts and basis, as opposed to condescension and pomp.

Ch'i 10-17-2006 10:02 PM

I wasn't talking about yo.... *sigh* nevermind. Let's start.

The accusation is that Islam is directly linked to, and causes, violence. I disagree. Let's start by taking a look at the top 59 populations of Islam in the modern world.
______________________________________________________________
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...try-smooth.png
Sunni (green) and Shi'a (blue). (based on the CIA factbook)
Rank) Country, Muslim Population, % Muslim
1) Indonesia, 213,469,356, 88.22%

2) India, 174,862,240, 16.2%

3) Pakistan, 162,487,489, 98%

4) Bangladesh, 129,681,509, 88%

5) Egypt, 70,530,237, 91%

6) Turkey, 68,963,953, 99.8%

7) Iran, 67,337,681, 99%

8) Nigeria, 64,385,994, 50%

9) China, 39,189,414, 3%

10) Morocco, 32,300,410, 98.7%

11) Algeria, 32,206,534, 99%

12) Afghanistan, 29,629,697, 99%

13) Sudan, 26,121,865, 65%

14) Iraq , 25,292,658, 97%

15) Saudi Arabia, 26,417,599, 99.9%

16) Ethiopia, 24,622,000, 32.8%

17) Uzbekistan, 23,897,563, 89%

18) Russia, 21,513,046, 15%

19) Yemen, 20,519,792, 99%

20) Syria, 16,234,901, 88%

21) Malaysia, 14,467,694, 60.4%

22) Tanzania, 12,868,224, 35%

23) Mali, 11,062,376, 90%

24) Niger, 10,499,343 90%

25) Senegal, 10459222, 94%

26) Tunisia, 9,974,201, 99%

27) Somalia, 8,548,670, 95%

28) Guinea, 8,047,686, 85%

29) Burkina Faso, 7,658,922, 55%

30) Azerbaijan, 7,389,783, 93.4%

31) Kazakhstan, 7,137,346, 47%

32) Tajikistan, 6,805,330, 95%

33) Côte d'Ivoire, 6,677,043, 38.6%

34) Congo (Kinshasa), 6,008,500, 10%

35) Libya, 5,592,596, 97%

36) Jordan, 5,471,745, 95%

37) Chad, 5,306,266, 54%

38) France, 4,549,213, 7.5%

39) Turkmenistan, 4,407,352, 89%

40) Philippines, 4,392,873, 5%

41) United States, 4,558,068, 1.5%

42) Kyrgyzstan, 4,117,024, 80%

43) Uganda, 4,090,422, 15%

44) Mozambique, 3,881,340, 20%

45) Sierra Leone, 3,610,585, 60%

46) Ghana, 3,364,776, 16%

47) Cameroon, 3,276,001, 20%

48) Thailand, 3,272,218, 5%

49) Mauritania, 3,083,772, 99.9%

50) Germany, 3,049,961, 3.7%

51) Oman, 2,971,567, 99%

52) Albania, 2,494,178, 70%

53) Malawi, 2,431,784, 20%

54) Kenya, 2,368,071, 7%

55) Eritrea, 2,280,799, 50%

56) Serbia and Montenegro, 2,274,126, 21%

57) Lebanon, 2,257,351, 85%

58) Kuait, 1,985,300, 59%

59) United Arb Emirates, 1,948,041, 76%
____________________________________________________________
Indonesia, India, Turkey, Nigeria, China and Morroco take the majority of the top ten largest Muslim populations. Yet these countries are not consistently engulfed in jihad, or Islam based violence. Most of the conflict in these countries are out of political coups, political disagreement on some level, or religous persecution (not to be confused with religion-based-violence). Somalia is a great example of this.


Sources: US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2004, CIA FactBook, census.gov, www.conflicttransform.net

host 10-17-2006 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
You would engage in such a challenge but you would loose. Any answer I ever encounter comes down to me being a bigoted xenophobe and not once addresses the issue at hand. Don't think that I have a monopoly on excluding perspective. Please give me your leftist drivel by the way, I would welcome it, you might find I am not so unreasonable when presented with facts and basis, as opposed to condescension and pomp.

I can't reach you, Mojo...you "know what you know".... my ambition with the effort in this post is to provoke the suspicions of others who might read this thread, that you, and other folks who "know what you know", are heavily influenced by neocon propagandists:

<b>I begin with Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, writing in David Horowitz's neocon propaganda "rag", "FrontpageMag:</b>
Quote:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=17828
<h1 style="margin-bottom:10px;">Washington Finally Gets It on Radical Islam</h1>

<p style="margin-top:10px;font-size:110%;">by Daniel Pipes<br>
<i>FrontPageMagazine.com</i><br>
April 25, 2005</p>

<P>Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating <A href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010919-2.html">since right after 9/11</A>, that Islam is a "religion of peace" not connected to the problem of terrorism? <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2021">Plenty of indications suggested that it knew better</A>, but year after year the official line remained the same. From the outside, it seemed that officialdom was engaged in active self-delusion.
<P>In fact, things were better than they seemed, as David E. Kaplan establishes in an important investigation in <I>U.S. News &amp; World Report</I>, based on over 100 interviews and the review of a dozen internal documents. Earlier arguments over the nature of the enemy – terrorism vs. radical Islam – have been resolved: America's highest officials widely agree that the country's "greatest ideological foe is a highly politicized form of radical Islam and that Washington and its allies cannot afford to stand by" as it gains in strength. To fight this ideology, the U.S. government now promotes a non-radical interpretation of Islam.</P>

<P>In "<A href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050425/25roots.htm">Hearts, Minds, and Dollars: In an Unseen Front in the War on Terrorism, America is Spending Millions to Change the Very Face of Islam</A>," dated today, Kaplan explains that Washington recognizes it has a security interest not just within the Muslim world but within Islam. Therefore, it must engage in shaping the very religion of Islam. Washington has focused on the root causes of terrorism – not poverty or U.S. foreign policy, but a compelling political ideology.</P>
<P>A key document in reaching this conclusion was the <I><A href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/counter_terrorism/counter_terrorism_strategy.pdf">National Strategy for Combating Terrorism</A></I>, issued by the White House in February 2003, which served as the basis for the bolder, more detailed, <I>Muslim World Outreach</I>, completed in mid-2004 and now the authoritative guide. (A government discussion of this topic, dating from August 2004, is <A href="http://www.usaid.gov/policy/cdie/session10.html">available online</A>.) The U.S. government, being a secular and predominantly non-Muslim institution, faces many limitations in what is at base a religious dispute, so it turns to Muslim organizations that share its goals, including governments, foundations, and nonprofit groups.</P>
<P>The tactics for fighting radical Islam and promoting moderate Islam vary from one government department to another: it's covert operations at the CIA, psyops at the Pentagon, and public diplomacy at the State Department. Whatever the name and approach, the common element is to encourage the benign evolution of Islam. Toward this end, the U.S. government, Kaplan writes, "has embarked on a campaign of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War." The goal is:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>to influence not only Muslim societies but Islam itself…Although U.S. officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle, many have concluded that America can no longer sit on the sidelines as radicals and moderates fight over the future of a politicized religion with over a billion followers. The result has been an extraordinary—and growing—effort to influence what officials describe as an Islamic reformation.</P></BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>In at least two dozen countries, Kaplan writes:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>Washington has quietly funded Islamic radio and TV shows, coursework in Muslim schools, Muslim think tanks, political workshops, or other programs that promote moderate Islam. Federal aid is going to restore mosques, save ancient Korans, even build Islamic schools…individual CIA stations overseas are making some gutsy and innovative moves. Among them: pouring money into neutralizing militant, anti-U.S. preachers and recruiters. "If you found out that Mullah Omar is on one street corner doing this, you set up Mullah Bradley on the other street corner to counter it," explains one recently retired official. In more-serious cases, he says, recruiters would be captured and "interrogated." Intelligence operatives have set up bogus jihad websites and targeted the Arab news media.</P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>In all, various agencies of the U.S. government are active in this Islamic activity in at least 24 countries. Projects include:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>the restoration of historic mosques in Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. In Kirgizstan, embassy funding helped restore a major Sufi shrine. In Uzbekistan, money has gone to preserve antique Islamic manuscripts, including 20 Korans, some dating to the 11<SUP>th</SUP> century. In Bangladesh, USAID is training mosque leaders on development issues. In Madagascar, the embassy even sponsored an intermosque sports tournament. Also being funded: Islamic media of all sorts, from book translations to radio and TV in at least a half-dozen nations.</P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>Madrassahs, or Islamic schools, are a particular concern, for these train the next generation of <I>jihadis</I> and terrorists. Washington deploys several tactics to counter their influence:</P>

<UL>
<LI>
<P>In Pakistan, U.S. funds go discreetly to third parties to train madrassah teachers to add practical subjects (math, science, and health) to their curriculum, as well as civics classes. A "model madrassah" program that may eventually include more than a thousand schools is also now underway.</P></LI>
<LI>
<P>In the Horn of Africa (defined by the Pentagon as Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen), the U.S. military finds out where Islamists plan to start a madrassah, then builds a public school in direct competition with it.</P></LI>
<LI>
<P>In Uganda, the U.S. embassy has <A href="http://www.manahijj.com/Artical_3849.htm">signed three grant awards</A> to fund the construction of three elementary-level madrassahs.</P></LI></UL>
<P>Kaplan quotes one American terrorism analyst saying, "We're in the madrassah business." But not all aid has an explicit Islamic theme. American money is partially funding a satellite version of the Sesame Street in Arabic stressing the need for religious tolerance.</P>
<P>Funds for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has nearly tripled, to more than $21 billion; and of this, more than half goes to the Muslim world. In addition to the familiar economic development programs, political projects involving Islamic groups, such as political training and media funding, are moving to the forefront. Spending on public diplomacy by the State Department has risen by nearly half since 9/11, to nearly $1.3 billion, with more expected. This largess has funded, among other programs, the Arabic-language Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Despite many complaints, Kaplan says they are showing signs of success. Plans ahead include making Alhurra available in Europe, and expanding programming in Persian and other key languages.</P>

<P><B>Comments:</B></P>
<P><B>1.</B> Working to change how Muslims understand their religion, of course, raises some difficult implications. It is one thing to want to help moderate Muslims and quite another to locate them. As I noted in "<A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2226">Identifying Moderate Muslims</A>," there is great confusion over who really is a moderate Muslim and <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/227">the U.S. government so far has a terrible record</A> in this regard. I sure hope those implementing the <I>Muslim World Outreach</I> agenda are engaging in the necessary research to get it right.</P>
<P><B>2.</B> The possibility exists that U.S. taxpayer dollars funding Islamic media, schools, and mosques will beef up their capabilities, for <I>influencing</I> Islam and <I>promoting</I> Islam are easily melded, especially given <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/90">the pro-Islamic attitudes of American political leaders</A>. (For this reason I have <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/183">criticized</A> the building of a mosque in Iraq and madrassahs in Indonesia.) To promote Islam contravenes the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") and one constitutional expert, Herman Schwartz, deems the sponsorship of Islamic institutions to be "probably unconstitutional." This again points to the need for extreme care.</P>

<P><B>3.</B> I heartily endorse the <I>Muslim World Outreach</I> approach; this is hardly surprising, for it closely aligns with my own recommendations. Here are excerpts from my January 2002 article, "<A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/103">Who Is the Enemy?</A>":</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>The United States, an overwhelmingly non-Muslim country, obviously cannot fix the problems of the Muslim world. … But outsiders, and the United States in particular, can critically help in precipitating the battle and in influencing its outcome. They can do so both by weakening the militant side and by helping the moderate one…Weakening militant Islam will require an imaginative and assertive policy, one tailored to the needs of each country.</P>
<P>But let us not delude ourselves. If the United States has over 100 million Islamist enemies (not to speak of an even larger number of Muslims who wish us ill on assorted other grounds), they cannot all be incapacitated. Instead, the goal must be to deter and contain them…That is where the moderate Muslims come in. If roughly half the population across the Muslim world hates America, the other half does not. Unfortunately, they are disarmed, in disarray, and nearly voiceless. But the United States does not need them for their power. It needs them for their ideas and for the legitimacy they confer, and in these respects their strengths exactly complement Washington's.…</P>
<P>[T]he U.S. role is less to offer its own views than to help those Muslims with compatible views, especially on such issues as relations with non-Muslims, modernization, and the rights of women and minorities. This means helping moderates get their ideas out on U.S.-funded radio stations like the newly-created Radio Free Afghanistan and, as Paula Dobriansky, the Undersecretary of State for global affairs, has suggested, making sure that tolerant Islamic figures—scholars, imams, and others—are included in U.S.-funded academic- and cultural-exchange programs.</P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><B>4.</B> It is very good that David Kaplan has made available the outlines of Washington's efforts to fix Islam. This is a project too large for the government alone to work on; the body politic as a whole needs to argue it out.</P><p><b>From <i>www.danielpipes.org</i> | <nobr>Original article available at: <i>www.danielpipes.org/article/2546</nobr></i></b></p>
The 2002 "presentaion" by Murawiec is of interest, in addition to it's warped content, because of the slate.com article that follows this WaPo piece, and links Murawiec to Richard Perle, "top ten" neocon !
Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies
Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.

The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration -- especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership -- and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.

One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."

The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia -- which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements.

Perle did not return calls to comment. A Rand spokesman said Murawiec, a former adviser to the French Ministry of Defense who now analyzes international security affairs for Rand, would not be available to comment.

"Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members' comments reflect the official views of the Department of Defense," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. "Saudi Arabia is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department's and the Administration's deep appreciation."

Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services."

If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted," although exactly how was not specified.

The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so -- in this view -- permit the U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.

"The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad," said the administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq. "Once you have a democratic regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after World War II, there are a lot of possibilities."

Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting, only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger's dismissal of the briefing and others did not.

One source summarized Kissinger's remarks as, "The Saudis are pro-American, they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage them."

Kissinger declined to comment on the meeting. He said his consulting business does not advise the Saudi government and has no clients that do large amounts of business in Saudi Arabia.

"I don't consider Saudi Arabia to be a strategic adversary of the United States," Kissinger said. "They are doing some things I don't approve of, but I don't consider them a strategic adversary."

Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle; former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.

Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. "I think that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts," he said. "Repeating lies will never make them facts."

"I think this view defies reality," added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. "The two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything it goes from strength to strength."

In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support for the mujaheddin.

At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel Hussein's invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region. Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his attacks on the United States.

The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small but influential group within the Bush administration.

"I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country," said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn't attend the July 10 meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United States "is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago."

In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard, which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted "The Coming Saudi Showdown." The current issue of Commentary, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, "Our Enemies, the Saudis."

"More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few all of it," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on military strategy. "Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country. . . . Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic interests or long-standing ties there."

Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board, declined to discuss its deliberations. But he did say that he views Saudi Arabia more as a problem than an enemy. "The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely a threat, [so] I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us," he said.

But that view is far from dominant in the U.S. government, others said. "The drums are beginning to beat on Saudi Arabia," said Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who consults frequently with the U.S. military.

He said the best approach isn't to confront Saudi Arabia but to support its reform efforts. "Our best hope is change through reform, and that can only come from within," he said.
background:
Quote:

http://www.slate.com/?id=2069119
The PowerPoint That Rocked the PentagonThe LaRouchie defector who's advising the defense establishment on Saudi Arabia.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002, at 7:49 PM ET

......According to Newsday, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard N. Perle, a former Pentagon official and full-time invade-Iraq hawk, invited Murawiec to brief the group, so Perle can't exactly distance himself from the presentation. But he can do the next best thing—duck reporters' questions. Murawiec also declined reporters' inquiries, including one from Slate.....

.....When he spoke on panel with Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute on Dec. 1, 1999, Murawiec was introduced as having just moved to the United States after "a dozen years" of working as managing director of GeoPol in Geneva, "a service that supplies advice to European clients, similar to what Kissinger Associates offers from New York, except without the accent." That is a bit of an overstatement. A Google search of "Murawiec and GeoPol" produces 12 hits. Compare that to the 10,300 hits on Google for "Kissinger Associates."

Murawiec's résumé would predict many Nexis hits, but a search of his name reveals just five bylines: Twice already this year, Murawiec has contributed to the neocon publication the National Interest, on the subject of Russia. [Correction: Murawiec wrote for the National Interest once in 2000 and once in 2002. The topic both times was Russia.] In 1999 he wrote for the Post's "Outlook" section on "internationalism," and in 1996 he contributed a piece to the Journal of Commerce on Russia. His only other Nexis-able byline is a dusty one from the Jan. 23, 1985, edition of the Financial Times, which describes Murawiec as "the European Economics Editor of the New York-based Executive Intelligence Review weekly magazine."

Executive Intelligence Review, as scholars of parapolitics know, is a publication of the political fantasist, convicted felon, and perpetual presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. It's not clear exactly when Murawiec left the LaRouche orbit. An article by LaRouche that appeared last year in Executive Intelligence Review calls Murawiec "a real-life 'Beetlebaum' of the legendary mythical horse-race, and a hand-me-down political carcass, currently in the possession of institutions of a peculiar odor." In 1997, LaRouche's wife Helga Zupp LaRouche wrote in Executive Intelligence Review (republished in the LaRouche-affiliated AboutSudan.com Web site) that Murawiec "was once part of our organization and is now on the side of organized crime." The truth value of that statement surely ranks up there with LaRouche's claim that the Queen of England controls the crack trade. To say, zero.

When Murawiec departed LaRouche's company is unclear, but Dennis King, author of 1989's Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, thinks it came when many followers split as LaRouche's legal problems grew and climaxed with a 1988 conviction for conspiracy and mail fraud. "[Murawiec] was not a political leader," says King, "but a follower who did intelligence-gathering."

Now that Murawiec has assumed such a vocal place in the policy debate, the man who gave him the lectern owes us the complete back-story. Over to you, Richard Perle.
<b>Paul Reynolds of the BBC reports on the money flow to the Rand Corp., and then the Rand Corp. report, "Civil Democratic Islam: partners, resources and strategies" by Cheryl Bernard is examined.... following that is a Wapo report that tells us that Ms. Bernard is married to Zalmay Khalilzad, protege of Bush admin. insider, Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha......</b>
Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200407061...as/3578429.stm
or http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...as/3578429.stm
Preventing a 'clash of civilisations'

By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

A strategy for the West to counter Islamic extremism by supporting Islamic moderates has been put forward in a report funded in part by a conservative American foundation.

It says that the West should help religious "modernists" in the Islamic world in order to prevent a "clash of civilisations."

It states: "It seems judicious to encourage the elements within the Islamic mix that are most compatible with global peace and the international community and that are friendly to democracy and modernity."

The report, called "Civil Democratic Islam: partners, resources and strategies", was drawn up by the Rand Corporation with financial help from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative trust fund which hands out more than $120 million a year to universities and other research organisations.

It is a sign perhaps that some American conservatives, many of whom want to press democratic reform in Muslim countries, realize that a focused approach is needed.

Suspicions

It is a contribution to a debate well under way in the West. The latest manifestation of this debate was a recent speech by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey, who wondered why Islam was "associated with violence throughout the world." His conclusion is not dissimilar to that of this report.

"Is extremism so ineluctably bound up with its faith that we are at last seeing its true character? Or could it be that a fight for the soul of Islam is going on that requires another great faith, Christianity, to support and encourage the vast majority of Muslims who resist this identification of their faith with terrorism?" he asked.

<h3>The United States and its allies need to be more discriminating in the way they perceive and interact with groups who call themselves Islamic
Cheryl Benard, Rand Corp</h3>

The recommendations have also come as the Bush administration is proposing to use the G8 summit in the American state of Georgia in June to push the issue of democratic and social reform in the Middle East. The summit will coincide with the handover of power in Iraq to an interim Iraqi government.

The Bush initiative has raised suspicions in Arab countries and among some of America's European allies who do not want anything imposed from the outside.

Islam's crisis

The report's writer, Cheryl Benard, said: "The United States and its allies need to be more discriminating in the way they perceive and interact with groups who call themselves Islamic.

"The term is too vague, and it doesn't really help us when we are looking to encourage progress and democratic principles, while being supportive of religious beliefs."

The report states: "Islam's current crisis has two main components: a failure to thrive and a loss of connection to the global mainstream. The Islamic world has been marked by a long period of backwardness and comparative powerlessness."

It says that Muslims disagree on what to do about this and identifies four essential positions in Muslim societies:
# Fundamentalists who "reject democratic values and contemporary Western culture."

# Traditionalists who "are suspicious of modernity, innovation and change."

# Modernists who "want the Islamic world to become part of global modernity."

# Secularists who "want the Islamic world to accept a division of religion and state."

The report says that the modernists and secularists are closest to the West but are general in a weaker position than the other groups, lacking money, infrastructure and a public platform.

Education

It suggests a strategy of supporting the modernists first. This would be done by, for example, publishing and distributing their works at subsidised cost, encouraging them to write for mass audiences and for youth, getting their views into the Islamic curriculum and helping them in the new media world which is dominated by fundamentalist and traditionalists.

It goes onto the say that traditionalists should be supported against the fundamentalists by publicising the traditionalist criticism of extremism and by" encouraging disagreements" between the two positions. It says that "in such places as Central Asia, they (traditionalists) may need to be educated and trained in orthodox Islam to be able to stand their ground."

A third strategy would be "to confront and oppose the fundamentalists" by, among other things, challenging their interpretation of Islam and revealing their links with illegal groups and activities.

Support for the secularists would be cautious and very selective, for example by encouraging "recognition of fundamentalism as a shared enemy."

The latest draft of the US government's own proposals are reported to include the promotion of parliamentary exchanges, the offering of advice on legislation, support for literacy campaigns, and the promotion of more access to personal and development finance.

The Rand approach is more overtly political and has definite diplomatic gains in mind.
I posted an article on 11/19.2005, about Zalmay Khalilzad, husband of Cheryl Bernard, who is the author of the Rand Corp. article:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...77&postcount=4
in this TFP thread:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1941577#post1941577"> Why Have Dems & Repubs Sold Out To Chalabi & How Do We Take Back the Government?</a>

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...3401-2001Nov22
Afghan Roots Keep Adviser Firmly in the Inner Circle
Consultant's Policy Influence Goes Back to the Reagan Era

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A41

Four years ago at a luxury Houston hotel, oil company adviser Zalmay Khalilzad was chatting pleasantly over dinner with leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban regime about their shared enthusiasm for a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal.

Today, Khalilzad works steps from the White House, helping President Bush and his closest advisers in attempts to annihilate those same Afghan officials.

From his perch as a member of the National Security Council and special assistant to the president, the Afghanistan native is one of the most influential voices on Afghan policy.

He is the only White House official to have lived in Afghanistan, and he has a visceral feel for the region's tensions and history. His long-term influence on matters pertaining to Central Asia is made apparent by a photo in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Snapped next door at the White House, it shows President Ronald Reagan and Khalilzad huddled in discussion with an Afghan leader, who at the time was battling to oust the Soviets.

"Zalmay is the ideal man for Afghanistan, because he is an Afghan himself and he's grown up there and knows the country," said Richard Dekmejian, a specialist in Islamic fundamentalism at the University of Southern California and an acquaintance for more than a decade. "He brings firsthand knowledge of the country together with the perspective of a policy expert. He's at the right place."

Since the 1980s -- as a Reagan administration policy planner, a consultant, a Pentagon strategist and a Rand Corp. scholar -- Khalilzad, a U.S. citizen, has been in contact with myriad squabbling Afghan warlords and political leaders.

Over the decades, he has evolved from a Cold War activist, celebrating the retreat of Soviet forces from his homeland, to a more moderate voice, calling for friendly persuasion with the Taliban. Now, he is a hawk urging the Taliban's destruction.

His evolving views are evident in a long string of journal articles, position papers and newspaper columns.

"The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran," Khalilzad wrote four years ago in The Washington Post. "We should . . . be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction. . . . It is time for the United States to reengage" the Taliban.

More recently, though, he began stressing that action against the Taliban "now is essential."

"The danger is growing," he wrote late last year with Daniel Byman of the Rand Corp. in Washington Quarterly, a policy magazine. "Soon the movement will be too strong to turn away from rogue behavior. It will gain more influence with insurgents, terrorists and narcotics traffickers and spread its abusive ideology throughout the region. . . . Alternatives to confrontation have little promise."

Khalilzad was born 50 years ago in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, 70 miles south of the Soviet border. While still young, his family moved to the regional capital of Kabul, where his Pashtun father worked in the government, which was then a monarchy.

"They certainly would have been people among the intellectual elite of the time," said Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "They became Kabuli, the Parisians of Afghanistan: urbane, urbanized people."

Khalilzad's first glimpse of the United States came as a teenager, when he visited this country in a student exchange program run by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker charitable organization, Gouttierre recalled. Khalilzad went home with a passion for American culture, including basketball.

"He saw and played basketball while in the U.S.," said Gouttierre, who coached Khalilzad on a student team. "As it turned out, he was not a great player. I knew then he would be a better intellectual than a basketball player."

After completing high school in Kabul, Khalilzad earned an undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut, followed by a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1979 -- the same year the Soviets invaded his homeland.

For the next decade, Khalilzad was an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, also serving as executive director of the Friends of Afghanistan, a support group for the Afghan mujaheddin then battling the Soviets.

From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad worked at the State Department as a special adviser to the undersecretary of state, consulting on the Iran-Iraq War and on the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He belonged to a small group of policymakers who successfully pressed the Reagan administration to provide arms -- including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles -- to anti-Soviet resistance fighters in Afghanistan.

He then served as undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration while it waged war against Iraq. Later, he worked as a senior political scientist at Rand, a consulting company that performs policy studies for the U.S. military. He directed strategy for Rand's Project Air Force and founded the corporation's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

He also joined the board of the Washington-based Afghanistan Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to raising interest in the country. He became the primary author of a foundation position paper that urged U.S. officials to prod the Taliban and its opposition toward joining forces in a new, broad-based government.

During the mid 1990s, while at the for-profit Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal Corp., a U.S. oil company that hoped to construct gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan. At the time, Unocal held signed business agreements with the Taliban.

In December 1997, Unocal brought top Taliban leaders to the United States to view its operations in Houston. Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for the visiting Taliban delegation. Over dinner, Khalilzad challenged the leaders on their treatment of women, whom the Taliban jailed for failing to cover their faces with veils. His debate with Amir Khan Muttaqi, Taliban minister of culture and information, escalated into a spirited dissection of the precise language of the Koran.

<b>Khalilzad's wife, Cheryl Bernard, is an Austrian writer and feminist whose novels champion women's rights.</b>

Over the years, Khalilzad has written and edited books with such titles as "Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare," "United States and Asia: Toward a New U.S. Strategy and Force Structure" and "Aerospace Power in the 21st Century." He also co-wrote, with his wife, "The Government of God: Iran's Islamic Republic."

After Bush's victory last November, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department. He also counseled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In his current role, he answers directly to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

"He is scholarly, cool. Always a smile. Outgoing," Dekmejian said. "He's not a preacher type, one who goes out there and moves the masses. But he is very good at addressing small groups of people. He is not an arrogant government person. He has an open mind."

Gouttierre said the White House is lucky to have an expert in diplomacy and military affairs who also has a gut-level feel for the politics of Afghanistan.

"He's the right kind of a guy at the right place right now," he said.
<b>If you read my posts on the thread linked here, and above the preceding WaPo article, <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1941577#post1941577"> Why Have Dems & Repubs Sold Out To Chalabi & How Do We Take Back the Government?</a> ....you might begin to wonder it Mojo, Ustwo, et al, arw correct in their pronouncements about Islam, or whether their opinions are heavily influenced by neocon propagandists, John Rendon, and "the Rand Corporation with financial help from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative trust fund which hands out more than $120 million a year to universities and other research organisations..... As much as anything else, folks, the negative PR intended to divide and conquer Islam, is about control of the oil, and other neocon and corporatist ambitions of global dominance...
"</b>

Ustwo 10-18-2006 05:44 AM

Ch'i do you know whats going on in India, Indonesia, and Nigeria in relation to Islam? China its harder to get reports from due to the nature of its government. Turkey is kept in check by the same system that is keeping Algeria out of the hands of the radicals, which is the military is very secular, and will not allow radicals to come to power or they will overthrow the government. One of the most interesting 'checks and balances' I've seen. This still hasn't saved 150,000 Algerian citizens, or kept radical protests out of Turkey.

If this is your shining example of the peaceful Muslim, you might want to rethink.

stevo 10-18-2006 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host
you might begin to wonder it Mojo, Ustwo, et al, arw correct in their pronouncements about Islam, or whether their opinions are heavily influenced by neocon propagandists, John Rendon, and "the Rand Corporation with financial help from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative trust fund which hands out more than $120 million a year to universities and other research organisations..... As much as anything else, folks, the negative PR intended to divide and conquer Islam, is about control of the oil, and other neocon and corporatist ambitions of global dominance...
"</b>

You, sir, are paranoid. So its all just one big conspiracy to get the oil and the folk on the right are too stupid and blind to notice. There's no such thing as islamofascists and militant islam is only a problem in conservative thought, not in the "real world" where, I assume, you reside.

Arguing, debating, or whatever its called, with a position such as yours is pointless to say the least. I'd much rather prefer to hear what Ch'i and DC_dux have to say, what they think. At least it contains substance. Sure beats hearing "its teh proaganda!!!!11!! you only 'know what you know' because your too stupid to think for yourself" bit I hear from you on any number of issues. :|

ps. you forgot the reverse vampires.

dc_dux 10-18-2006 06:26 AM

If you look at the most recent State Department reports on Turkey and Indonesia, you will certainly see numerous and agregious human rights violations but the reports also cite how these moderate (yes, moderate) civilian elected governments are trying to reform.
Quote:

Turkey:
Turkey, with a population of approximately 69.6 million, is a constitutional republic with a multiparty parliamentary system and a president with limited powers elected by the single‑chamber parliament, the Turkish Grand National Assembly. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, considered generally free and fair, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the majority of seats and formed a one‑party government. The civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; although there were improvements in a number of areas, serious problems remained.

Indonesia:
Indonesia is a multiparty, democratic, presidential republic with a population of approximately 241 million. In October 2004 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became the country's first directly elected president as a result of elections that international and domestic observers judged to be free and fair. Voters also chose two national legislative bodies in 2004: the house of representatives (DPR) and the newly created house of regional representatives (DPD). While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, in some instances elements of the security forces acted independently of civilian authority.

There were improvements in the human rights situation during the year and, although significant problems remained particularly in areas of separatist conflict, the end of the country's long‑running internal conflict in Aceh Province was a major step forward. The government faced an intermittent, low intensity guerrilla conflict in Papua and West Irian Jaya provinces; inter‑communal violence in Maluku and Central Sulawesi provinces; and terrorist bombings in various locations. Inadequate resources, poor leadership, and limited accountability contributed to serious violations by security forces. Widespread corruption further degraded an already weak regard for rule of law and contributed to impunity. Poverty, high unemployment, and a weak education system rendered all citizens, particularly children and women, vulnerable to human rights abuses. During the year the government devoted considerable resources and attention to the recovery effort following the devastating December 2004 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 130 thousand persons dead and missing in Aceh and North Sumatra provinces. The country struggled to come to terms with human rights abuses committed by prior governments.

During the year there were significant improvements in the human rights situation. For the first time, citizens directly elected leaders in 149 local elections at the city, regency (county equivalent), and provincial level. On August 15, the government signed a peace agreement with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which both sides implemented thereby greatly reducing human rights abuses in that province. In Papua and West Irian Jaya provinces, the government inaugurated the Papuan People's Assembly and took other steps toward fulfilling the 2001 Special Autonomy Law on Papua. Security forces showed increasing restraint in response to nonviolent separatist demonstrations in Papua. The government began an anticorruption campaign that achieved some results, including high profile convictions.
We wont see western style democracies anytime soon, but it seems to me we should work with these moderate muslim governments and encourage and support further reform, rather than alienate them and their citizens and potentially create situations than feed the more radical elements.

hiredgun 10-18-2006 06:28 AM

Mojo_PeiPei: Sure. I'm originally from Pakistan, and I was raised in a very religious household. I'm clearly English-educated, of course, but I'm not even really important here. I know tons of Pakistanis who have never left Pakistan. I've never met one who didn't mourn 9/11, or who condones terrorism in general. Such people exist there, but generally not in the mainstream society. They represent an extreme. The same is true in Egypt, where I recently lived for a year. This is true even among those who would be called Islamists... those who espouse political Islam or push for the enforcement of Islamic law.

Again, let me reiterate that when I say that, I don't mean to entirely marginalize the problem. I acknowledge the problem. There is a problem with Islam in the world today, and it's a problem that Muslims will need to do much more to address. But to say that it's a problem somehow fundamental to Islam, that brutishness and violence somehow form the very essence of Islam, is in the realm of the absurd. It simply doesn't reflect the lived reality of over a billion people on this planet.

Ustwo 10-18-2006 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo
Sure beats hearing "its teh proaganda!!!!11!! you only 'know what you know' because your too stupid to think for yourself" bit I hear from you on any number of issues. :|

ps. you forgot the reverse vampires.

http://www.nypress.com/18/28/travel/TRAVEL-AMISH.jpg Yep, Jebbadia Stevo, its about time I fire up this infernal lap top and give my daily dose of neocon propaganda.

NCB 10-18-2006 06:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hiredgun
Mojo_PeiPei: Sure. I'm originally from Pakistan, and I was raised in a very religious household. I'm clearly English-educated, of course, but I'm not even really important here. I know tons of Pakistanis who have never left Pakistan. I've never met one who didn't mourn 9/11, or who condones terrorism in general. Such people exist there, but generally not in the mainstream society. They represent an extreme. The same is true in Egypt, where I recently lived for a year. This is true even among those who would be called Islamists... those who espouse political Islam or push for the enforcement of Islamic law.

Again, let me reiterate that when I say that, I don't mean to entirely marginalize the problem. I acknowledge the problem. There is a problem with Islam in the world today, and it's a problem that Muslims will need to do much more to address. But to say that it's a problem somehow fundamental to Islam, that brutishness and violence somehow form the very essence of Islam, is in the realm of the absurd. It simply doesn't reflect the lived reality of over a billion people on this planet.

Very well stated and I respect your honesty. However, I will have to take issue with you in regards to how moderate Muslims recognize the problem. If they do indeed recognize it, then they need to take the next step and come out en masse to denounce every act of violence done in the name of Islam. Anything short of that will be as if they have done nothing at all. Sorry, but I speak for a lot of Americans who feel enough time has been given for moderate Muslims to stpe up to the plate and stomp the extremism out of their own religion.

dc_dux 10-18-2006 06:36 AM

UStwo....I dont see how that photo contributes to the discussion in any meaningful way.

If you and Host have problems with each other, I suggest you both take it private.

Ustwo 10-18-2006 07:15 AM

I think the first thing removed in a liberal is his sense of humor.

If you were really interested in, contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way, you would have pmed me your message but instead you posted it here for all to read.

P.S. Read the Koran, you will find it very interesting I'm sure and its a pretty easy read.

hiredgun 10-18-2006 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB
Very well stated and I respect your honesty. However, I will have to take issue with you in regards to how moderate Muslims recognize the problem. If they do indeed recognize it, then they need to take the next step and come out en masse to denounce every act of violence done in the name of Islam. Anything short of that will be as if they have done nothing at all. Sorry, but I speak for a lot of Americans who feel enough time has been given for moderate Muslims to stpe up to the plate and stomp the extremism out of their own religion.

A lot of Muslims have spoken up, and I've talked about this earlier in the thread. Take a look at those posts. I agree that we need to do more. But I think your characterization, that this task is entirely the responsibility of the Muslim community itself, is unfair. How easy do you think it is to convince people with a message of moderation and peace when the dominant conservative discourse is one that condemns and blames the Islamic faith itself at every turn, and while, as far as most Muslims can see, the US has still provided no actual, plausible justification for the war it began 3 years ago?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
I think the first thing removed in a liberal is his sense of humor.

If you were really interested in, contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way, you would have pmed me your message but instead you posted it here for all to read.

P.S. Read the Koran, you will find it very interesting I'm sure and its a pretty easy read.

UsTwo, your cherry-picking of quotes from the Qur'an is not a useful way to try to understand Islam, unless your only purpose is to find ways to condemn it and reinforce your existing view. Let me demonstrate.

Lend me a little under 6 minutes and watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C10sSC2kB3Q

It is from Richard Dawkins' documentary on faith; Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and makes a pretty vitriolic attack on Christianity based on scripture. Can you please explain to me the difference between his analysis of the Bible, and your understanding of the Qur'an?

dc_dux 10-18-2006 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
I think the first thing removed in a liberal is his sense of humor.

If you were really interested in, contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way, you would have pmed me your message but instead you posted it here for all to read.

P.S. Read the Koran, you will find it very interesting I'm sure and its a pretty easy read.

Thank you for making my point for me again.

I have tried on numerous threads to discuss the issues with you in a civil and rational manner.... from your assertions about Carter and Rice to radio deregulation and the problems with islam.

More often then not, you respond with sarcasm and what you obviously think are "witty" and humorous retorts.

There is a reason I callled you out publicly on your latest...and I will continue to do so when I see an inane post. (consider this such a public response).

But I will also discuss the issues with you anytime you are prepared to do so in a mature and reasonable way. :)

roachboy 10-18-2006 08:21 AM

i'll answer the questions posed earlier in this thread, but not in this context.
you want an actual discussion, mojo, please start another thread.
this one is done.

NCB 10-18-2006 08:58 AM

Quote:

But I think your characterization, that this task is entirely the responsibility of the Muslim community itself, is unfair. How easy do you think it is to convince people with a message of moderation and peace when the dominant conservative discourse is one that condemns and blames the Islamic faith itself at every turn, and while, as far as most Muslims can see, the US has still provided no actual, plausible justification for the war it began 3 years ago?
No, its not unfair. Only Muslims can alter Muslim behavior and culture. Blaming the US for the Muslims community's own failures may bode well in liberal circles, but it doesnt exactly square with reality and represents either cowardice or refusal to condemn and reform their own people and religion

Ch'i 10-18-2006 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy
you want an actual discussion, mojo, please start another thread.
this one is done.

I agree, make another thread for this mojo.

highthief 10-18-2006 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB
No, its not unfair. Only Muslims can alter Muslim behavior and culture. Blaming the US for the Muslims community's own failures may bode well in liberal circles, but it doesnt exactly square with reality and represents either cowardice or refusal to condemn and reform their own people and religion

http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php

Obviously, there are millions of Muslims who denounce terror, as any simple search of the net or news sites will show. People, however, speak of Islam as if it were one big religion, with some Pope sitting at the head of it telling people what to do. There is no centralization of Islam, and there are many sects. It is very obvious that in some parts of the Muslim world - Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan - a breeding ground exists for terrorism, due in part to the shithole conditions that these people live in brought about by constant warfare, poverty and oppression, and in part due to groups using Islam to motivate others into commiting terror attacks. Whereas other areas are much more stable, making genuine movement towards more secular, democratic, representative and liberal forms of government and society.

As for the line about not blaiming the US for Islamic terrorism, Iraq used to be a secular country without religious terrorism. Now it is a nation utterly engulfed by terrorism based upon religion, and in which the various sects prey upon one another.

Everyone involved in this - from Muslims around the world to the US and it allies - have had a hand in the rise of terrorism, and it is either incredibly partisan or incredibly uneducated to suggest otherwise.

I take exception to some of hiredgun's statements as well. I don't live in Pakistan, I'm not a Muslim, but I have absolutely heard Muslims speak of hating the US and the west (even while living here) and at least quietly applauding certain terrorist actions. I find it ... implausible to think he has never heard a Muslim express such sentiments in his presence, when surely, he knows more Muslims than I do.

hiredgun 10-18-2006 10:47 AM

I'm sorry you find my experiences implausible, highthief. They are mine, and true, although I don't make any particular claims as to how far they can be generalized. My connections to Pakistan are largely friends and family, and as you can imagine, it would not be easy to support anti-American terror when you have loved ones living in the bullseye.

host 10-18-2006 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo
You, sir, are paranoid. So its all just one big conspiracy to get the oil and the folk on the right are too stupid and blind to notice. There's no such thing as islamofascists and militant islam is only a problem in conservative thought, not in the "real world" where, I assume, you reside.

Arguing, debating, or whatever its called, with a position such as yours is pointless to say the least. I'd much rather prefer to hear what Ch'i and DC_dux have to say, what they think. At least it contains substance. Sure beats hearing "its teh proaganda!!!!11!! you only 'know what you know' because your too stupid to think for yourself" bit I hear from you on any number of issues. :|

ps. you forgot the reverse vampires.

Great argument, stevo...and the agenda is about much more than oil......


Has the thought crossed any of your minds that it is "odd" that one man, neocon trained, PNAC member, Zalmay Khalilzad, "picked" Karzai to rule Afghanistan, served as US ambassador in Afghanistan, and then moved on to pick the Iraqi government coalition, and now serves as US ambassador to Iraq, after a track record of defining the US strategy for that region of the world, under the influence of "Jihad" book publisher, Thomas E. Gouttierre...obscure Nebraska professor, the only man from academia who apparently advises the US government on Afghan affairs?

If there really is an emerging "caliphate" that Bush is committed to stop, why are the ranks of diplomatic and DOD personnel, so "thin"? Why does Zalmay Khalilzad appear to be the "entire show"? <b>Can any of you who have been "spoon-fed" this "Isalmic Fascist" bullshit, and then enthusiastically "licked the spoon", even stand to read the following contradictions? Doesn't the reporting document that the CIA and USAID were the authors of jihad? What have you personally, been right about, lately? My advice is to open your mind. I'm sharing the information that I have found. It speaks volumes about you, when your reaction is to attack me personally, just because I show you things that threaten your belief systems.</b>
Quote:

http://vdedaj.club.fr/cuba/npa_fidel_20011102.html
<b>....I do not share the view that the United States' main pursuit in Afghanistan was oil. I rather see it as part of a geo-strategic concept. No one would make such a mistake simply to go after oil, least of all a country with access to any oil in the world, including all the Russian oil and gas it wishes. It would be sufficient for the U.S. to invest, to buy and to pay. Based on its privileges, the United States can even purchase it by minting reserve bonds on a 30 years maturity span.</b> That is how, throughout more than 80 years, it has bought products and services accounting for over 6.6 trillion dollars.

Military actions in Afghanistan are fraught with dangers. That is an extremely troubled area where two large countries have fought several wars. There are profound national and religious antagonisms between them. The population of the disputed territory is mostly Islamic. As the tempers grow frail, a war might break out; and both countries have nuclear capability. That risk is as serious as the destabilization of the Pakistani government by the war. That government is being placed in a highly complicated position. The Taliban emerged there, and they share the same Pashtun ethnia with an undetermined number of Pakistanis, in fact, no less than 10 million; and I have chosen the most conservative figure among those that have been mentioned. They also share with fanatic passion the same religious beliefs. The U.S. military are usually well versed in their trade. I have met some when, after retirement, they have visited Cuba as scholars. They write books, tell stories and make political analyses. I was then not surprised by the information released by The New Yorker magazine of October 29 in the sense that there was a contingency plan to seize the Pakistani nuclear warheads, in case a radical group took over the government of that country.

It was absolutely impossible for the American strategists to overlook that substantial risk. Every bomb dropped on Afghanistan, every picture of dead children or people dying or suffering from terrible wounds, tend to compound that risk. What is hard to imagine is the reaction of those responsible for protecting those weapons, to a plan that is by now of public domain as much as Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel García Marquez.

I am not aware of something the U.S. Special Services should know only too well, that is, where and how those nuclear warheads are kept and the way in which they are protected. I try to imagine -and it is not easy-- how such an action could be conducted by elite troops. Perhaps, one day someone might tell how it could be done. But, still, I find it hard to imagine the political scenario in the aftermath of such an action when the fight would be against over 100 million additional Muslims. The U.S. government has denied the existence of such contingency plan. It was to be expected. It could not do otherwise.

The most logical question that crosses my mind is whether the heads of governments and statesmen who are friends of the United States and have a longstanding political and practical experience did not see these potential dangers, and why they did not warn the United States and tried to persuade it. Obviously, America's friends fear it but do not appreciate it.

It is always difficult to try to guess when it comes to these issues. But, there is something of which I am absolutely certain: it would be sufficient if 20 or 30 thousand men used clever methods of irregular warfare, the same that the United States wants to use there, and that struggle could last 20 years. <b>It is completely impossible to subdue the Afghan adversary in an irregular warfare on that country's ground with bombs and missiles, whatever the caliber and the power of these weapons.</b>

They have already been through the hardest psychological moments. They have lost everything: family, housing, and properties. They have absolutely nothing else they can lose. Nothing seems to indicate that they will surrender their weapons, even if their most notable leaders were killed. The use of tactical weapons, which some have suggested, would have the effect of multiplying by one hundred that mistake and with it unbearable criticism and universal isolation. Therefore, I have never believed that the leaders of that country have seriously considered such tactics, not even when they were most enraged.

These are simply my thoughts that I am expressing to you. I think the way to show solidarity with the American people that lost thousands of innocent lives, including those of children, youths and elders, men and women to the outrageous attack, is by frankly speaking out our minds. The sacrifice of those lives should not be in vain, but rather it should be useful to save many lives, to prove that thinking and conscience can be stronger than terror and death.

We are not suggesting that any crime committed on Earth should be left unpunished, I simply do not have elements of judgement to accuse anyone in particular. <b>But, if the culprits were those that the U.S. government is trying to punish and remove, there is no doubt that the way in which they are doing it will lead to the creation of altars where the alleged murderers will be worshiped as saints by millions of men and women.</b>

It would be better to build an enormous altar to Peace where Humankind can pay homage to all the innocent victims of blind terror and violence, be it an American or an Afghan child. This is said by somebody who considers himself an adversary of the United States' policies but not an enemy of that country, one who believes to have an idea of human history, psychology and justice.

Having come to this point there is only one more issue left to discuss.

What is happening with the anthrax is absolutely incomprehensible. Real and sincere panic has been created. The stocks of medications to fight that bacterium are being depleted. Many people are buying gas masks and other devices, some of which cost thousands of dollars.

Extravagant behavior can cause more damage than the disease. When there is an outbreak of any disease, whatever the cause, it is essential to warn the people and to provide information on the illness and the measures that should be taken to prevent it, diagnose it and fight it. Diseases are carried from one country to another in natural ways, that is, through people, animals, plants, food, insects, commercial products and a thousand other ways, without the need for anyone to produce them in laboratories. That is how it has been historically. That is the reason for so many public-health regulations.

The chaos and the psychological reaction to anthrax have turned the American society into a hostage of those who want to hurt it, knowing beforehand that they will sow terror. On numerous occasions our country has had to face up to new diseases affecting people, plantations and herds, many of them deliberately introduced. No wonder our country has graduated 67,128 medical doctors and thousands of technicians in plant and animal health. Our people know what should be immediately done in such cases.

No other country in the world compares with the United States in the number of research centers, laboratories and medications, or the capacity to produce them or purchase them, to fight that or any other disease. In the face of real or imaginary risk, either current or future, there is no other choice but to educate the people to cope with them. This is what the Cubans have done.

<b>The causes that gave rise to panic should be analyzed. Certainly, it could not be said that the United States is not in risk of terrorist actions. However, I do not believe that under the present circumstances of generalized alertness, and the measures taken, any group inside or outside America could come up with a coordinated action, organized in every detail for a long time, synchronized and executed with such precision as that of September 11.</b>

In my view the main risk may lie with individual actions, or actions carried out by very few people from inside or outside America that could cause lesser or greater damage. None can be underestimated. But as important as the preventive measures that should be taken to tackle such risks, or even more important, is to psychologically disarm the potential perpetrators. And these include those who might want to do it out of political extremism, vengeance or hatred, or a significant number of people who are frustrated, unstable or deranged who might feel tempted by the spectacular or by wishes to be the main actors of well-known events. <b>They could drive the American people mad by sending mail with or without anthrax.</b> Everything possible should be done to put an end to panic, extravaganza and chaos, then danger will be reduced. ......
Quote:

Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War; $2 Billion Program Reversed Tide for Rebels Series: CIA IN AFGHANISTAN Series Number: 1/2; [FINAL Edition]
Steve Coll. The Washington Post Washington, D.C.: Jul 19, 1992. pg. a.01

.... During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory - into the Soviet Union itself. <h3>Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans</h3>, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.

"We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union," Casey said, according to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting.

Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire.

Eight years after Casey's visit to Pakistan, the Soviet Union is no more. Afghanistan has fallen to the heavily armed, fraticidal mujaheddin rebels. The Afghans themselves did the fighting and dying - and ultimately won their war against the Soviets - and not all of them laud the CIA's role in their victory. But even some sharp critics of the CIA agree that in military terms, its secret 1985 escalation of covert support to the mujaheddin made a major difference in Afghanistan, the last battlefield of the long Cold War.

How the Reagan administration decided to go for victory in the Afghan war between 1984 and 1988 has been shrouded in secrecy and clouded by the sharply divergent political agendas of those involved. But with the triumph of the mujaheddin rebels over Afghanistan's leftist government in April and the demise of the Soviet Union, some intelligence officials involved have decided to reveal how the covert escalation was carried out.

The most prominent of these former intelligence officers is Yousaf, the Pakistani general who supervised the covert war between 1983 and 1987 and who last month published in Europe and Pakistan a detailed account of his role and that of the CIA, titled "The Bear Trap."

This article and another to follow are based on extensive interviews with Yousaf as well as with more than a dozen senior Western officials who confirmed Yousaf's disclosures and elaborated on them.

U.S. officials worried about what might happen if aspects of their stepped-up covert action were exposed - or if the program succeeded too well and provoked the Soviets to react in hot anger. The escalation that began in 1985 "was directed at killing Russian military officers," one Western official said. "That caused a lot of nervousness."

One source of jitters was that Pakistani intelligence officers - partly inspired by Casey - began independently to train Afghans and funnel CIA supplies for scattered strikes against military installations, factories and storage depots within Soviet territory.

The attacks later alarmed U.S. officials in Washington, who saw military raids on Soviet territory as "an incredible escalation," according to Graham Fuller, then a senior U.S. intelligence official who counseled against any such raids. Fearing a large-scale Soviet response and the fallout of such attacks on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy, the Reagan administration blocked the transfer to Pakistan of detailed satellite photographs of military targets inside the Soviet Union, other U.S. officials said.

<h3>To Yousaf, who managed the Koran-smuggling program and the guerrilla raids inside Soviet territory, the United States ultimately "chickened out" on the question of taking the secret Afghan war onto Soviet soil.</h3> Nonetheless, Yousaf recalled, Casey was "ruthless in his approach, and he had a built-in hatred for the Soviets."

An intelligence coup in 1984 and 1985 triggered the Reagan administration's decision to escalate the covert progam in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. The United States received highly specific, sensitive information about Kremlin politics and new Soviet war plans in Afghanistan. Already under pressure from Congress and conservative activists to expand its support to the mujaheddin, the Reagan administration moved in response to this intelligence to open up its high-technology arsenal to aid the Afghan rebels.

Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.

The move to upgrade aid to the mujaheddin roughly coincided with the well-known decision in 1986 to provide the mujaheddin with sophisticated, U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Before the missiles arrived, however, those involved in the covert war wrestled with a wide-ranging and at times divisive debate over how far they should go in challenging the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Roots of the Rebellion

In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first - and for many years the only - presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations, according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter document.

The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few considered possible at the time, these sources said.

The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA operations in Nicaragua and Angola.

Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded secrets.

In all, the United States funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II.

In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were significant - 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to Yousaf - but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.

Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet commanders pursued them increasingly, to the point where some U.S. congressmen who traveled with the mujaheddin - including Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.) and Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) - believed that the war might turn against the rebels.

The new Soviet tactics reflected a perception in the Kremlin that the Red Army was in danger of becoming bogged down in Afghanistan and needed to take decisive steps to win the war, according to sensitive intelligence that reached the Reagan administration in 1984 and 1985, Western officials said. The intelligence came from the upper reaches of the Soviet Defense Ministry and indicated that Soviet hard-liners were pushing a plan to attempt to win the Afghan war within two years, sources said.

The new war plan was to be implemented by Gen. Mikhail Zaitsev, who was transferred from the prestigious command of Soviet forces in Germany to run the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the spring of 1985, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was battling hard-line rivals to take power in a Kremlin succession struggle.

Cracking the Kremlin's Strategy

The intelligence about Soviet war plans in Afghanistan was highly specific, according to Western sources. The Soviets intended to deploy one-third of their total Spetsnaz forces in Afghanistan - nearly 2,000 "highly trained and motivated" paratroops, according to Yousaf. In addition, the Soviets intended to dispatch a stronger KGB presence to assist the special forces and regular troops, and they intended to deploy some of the Soviet Union's most sophisticated battlefield communications equipment, referred to by some as the "Omsk vans" - mobile, integrated communications centers that would permit interception of mujaheddin battlefield communications and rapid, coordinated aerial attacks on rebel targets, such as the kind that were demoralizing the rebels by 1984.

At the Pentagon, U.S. military officers pored over the intelligence, considering plans to thwart the Soviet escalation, officials said. The answers they came up with, said a Western official, were to provide "secure communications {for the Afghan rebels}, kill the gunships and the fighter cover, better routes for {mujaheddin} infiltration, and get to work on {Soviet} targets" in Afghanistan, including the Omsk vans, through the use of satellite reconnaissance and increased, specialized guerrilla training.

"There was a demand from my friends {in the CIA} to capture a vehicle intact with this sort of communications," recalled Yousaf, referring to the newly introduced mobile Soviet facilities. Unfortunately, despite much effort, Yousaf said, "we never succeeded in that."

"Spetsnaz was key," said Vincent Cannistraro, a CIA operations officer who was posted at the time as director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Not only did communications improve, but the Spetsnaz forces were willing to fight aggressively and at night. The problem, Cannistraro said, was that as the Soviets moved to escalate, the U.S. aid was "just enough to get a very brave people killed" because it encouraged the mujaheddin to fight but did not provide them with the means to win.

Conservatives in the Reagan administration and especially in Congress saw the CIA as part of the problem. Humphrey, the former senator and a leading conservative supporter of the mujaheddin, found the CIA "really, really reluctant" to increase the quality of support for the Afghan rebels to meet Soviet escalation. For their part, CIA officers felt the war was not going as badly as some skeptics thought, and they worried that it might not be possible to preserve secrecy in the midst of a major escalation. A sympathetic U.S. official said the agency's key decision-makers "did not question the wisdom" of the escalation, but were "simply careful."

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.

New Covert U.S. Aid

The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies - a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf - as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied the mujaheddin across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads, the sources said.

CIA and Pentagon specialists offered detailed satellite photographs and ink maps of Soviet targets around Afghanistan. The CIA station chief in Islamabad ferried U.S. intercepts of Soviet battlefield communications.

Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. <b>Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site.......</b>
Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad
Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A01

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code......

Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets.

<h3>The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture</h3> and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID "will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries."

The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.

<h3>President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach "respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry."

The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits.</h3>

AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.....

.... Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID's former director established that taxpayers' funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has "not a legal leg to stand on" in distributing the books.

"Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious," she said.

Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. <b>The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994. .....</b>

.... AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. <b>But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.</b>

Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers. ....

.....<h3> Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.</h3>

"We were quite shocked," said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. "The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it."

....In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction.

Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF's new texts could be used only as supplements.

Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references.

About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as "civics" courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and "how to be a good Muslim."

UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old "militarized" books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials.

On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said.

"We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum," he said.
Quote:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/af...n/schools.html
Getting children back to school is a number one priority in Afghanistan's post war government. But the big question is: what will they learn?
Back to school in Afghanistan
CBC News Online | January 27, 2004

The National | Airdate: May 6, 2002
Reporter: Carol Off | Producer: Heather Abbott | Editor: Catherine McIsaac

....A student learns to add and subtract bullets
Math teachers use bullets as props to teach lessons in subtraction. This isn't their idea. During decades of war, the classroom has been the best place to indoctrinate young people with their duty to fight. Government-sponsored textbooks in Afghanistan are filled with violence. For years, war was the only lesson that counted.

The Mujahideen, Afghanistan's freedom fighters, used the classroom to prepare children to fight the Soviet empire. The Russians are long gone but the textbooks are not. The Mujahideen had wanted to prepare the next generation of Afghans to fight the enemy, so pupils learned the proper clips for a Kalashnikov rifle, the weight of bombs needed to flatten a house, and how to calculate the speed of bullets. Even the girls learn it.

"We were providing education behind the enemy lines."

But the Mujahideen had a lot of help to create this warrior culture in the school system from the United States, which paid for the Mujahideen propaganda in the textbooks. It was all part of American Cold War policy in the 1980s, helping the Mujahideen defeat the Soviet army on Afghan soil.

University of Nebraska
The University of Nebraska was front and center in that effort. The university did the publishing and had an Afghan study center and a director who was ready to help defeat the "Red Menace."

"I think Ronald Reagan himself felt that this was a violation of the rights of the Afghans," <b>says Tom Goutier, who was behind the Mujahideen textbook project.</b> "I think a lot of those working for him thought this was an opportunity for us to do the Soviet Union some damage."

Goutier's personal involvement in Afghanistan began in 1964 as a young U.S. peace corps volunteer. Over the years, he rubbed shoulders with Mujahideen leaders and he learned Afghan languages. During the 1980s, his love of America and his love of Afghanistan merged.

"We were living in an era in which the Afghans were trying to learn to survive," he says. "They were fighting for their survival in which a million of them were killed, a million and a half wounded. So, at that time, there was a lot of militaristic thinking."

The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan in 1979. Its fighting forces were well armed and ruthless. The Mujahideen fought the Soviets throughout the 1980s with a lot of covert aid from the U.S.

In 1986, under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. put a rush order on its proxy war in Afghanistan. The CIA gave Mujahideen an overwhelming arsenal of guns and missiles. But a lesser-known fact is that the U.S. also gave the Mujahideen hundreds of millions of dollars in non-lethal aid; $43 million just for the school textbooks. The U.S. Agency for International Development, AID, coordinated its work with the CIA, which ran the weapons program.

"We were providing education behind the enemy lines," says Goutier. "We were providing military support against the enemy lines. So this was a kind of coordinated effort indeed.

"I eventually was involved in some of the discussions, negotiations for removing the Soviets from Afghanistan. I was an American specialist in these discussions and many people in those discussions said just as important as (the) introduction of stinger missiles was the introduction of the humanitarian assistance because the Soviets never believed the U.S. would go to that extent."

"The U.S. government told the AID to let the Afghan war chiefs decide the school curriculum and the content of the textbooks," says CBC'S Carol Off. "What discussions did you have with the Mujahideen leaders? Was it any effort to say maybe this isn't the best for an eight-year-old's mind?"

"No, because we were told that that was not for negotiations and that the content was to be that which they decided," says Goutier.

There were those who opposed the text book project, such as Sima Samar who ran a school in those days, but opposition did little good.

Sima Samar
"I was opposing but we had no choice," says Samar, who served as minister of women's affairs for the interim government that ran Afghanistan after the Taliban were driven out. "It was already done and… nobody had the freedom to speak against all those things."

"I was interested in being of any type of assistance that I could to help the Afghans get out of their mess and to be frank also anything that would help the United States in order to advance its interests," says Goutier.

American interests were well served. But after the defeat of the Soviet empire, the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan. The country descended into civil war. The U.S. gave almost no money to help rebuild after the war against the Soviets and no money to rewrite the school textbooks.

.....The latest war in Afghanistan is now over but there's a constant threat of a new one. In the markets, tailors make uniforms for the stream of young men who want to be mercenaries. Only hunting guns are sold now since the heavy weapons are banned. But they still exist, woven into the very fabric of the country.

The Afghan children who returned to school in 2002 got new textbooks with new ideas but from the same old publisher. The University of Nebraska secured the contract again for $6.5 million from the United States government.

However this time there was a promise that they will not contain war propaganda.
Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200111260...xamined+.shtml
<b>CIA, scholar links to Asia, Mideast reexamined</b>

By Chris Mooney, Globe Correspondent, 11/25/2001

Andrew Hess, who teaches a course on Afghanistan at Tufts University, is one of the nation's top specialists on a suddenly crucial part of the world. Since the United States started its Afghan campaign - and began getting criticism for its lack of expertise in Central Asia - Hess has waited for the government to tap his knowledge.

He's still waiting.

This fall Hess has taken calls from newspaper reporters and television stations - but hasn't received one call from US intelligence. He says he's baffled.

''I'm the only person with a program at the graduate level in the United States that deals with southwest Asia,'' he said.

Since Sept. 11, the CIA has made clear that it is eager for recruits familiar with the Middle East and Central Asia, especially those who can speak Arabic, Dari, or Pashto. And applications have shot through the stratosphere, many from recent college graduates.

But the deeper knowledge of the area and language lies not with students but with professors like Hess. And when it comes to academics, many intelligence watchers say that contact with the CIA largely remains limited to those scholars who have well-established credentials as insiders.

....The Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha <b>has longstanding ties with Washington policymakers and collaborates regularly with intelligence.</b> ''We're at war,'' said center director Thomas Gouttierre. ''I'm an American, and the American government is leading this war. If we have some knowledge or analysis that could be of advantage, we should be forthcoming.''....
Quote:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...eo&match=exact
In Nebraska, an Oasis of Insight Into Afghanistan's Heart; [Biography]
Jodi Wilgoren. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Oct 6, 2001. pg. A.8

WHEN Thomas E. Gouttierre, a baker's son from Maumee, Ohio, applied for the Peace Corps in 1964, he had never even flown on an airplane, never mind traveled beyond the United States. He wanted to go somewhere that ''wasn't hot'' and ''wasn't in the Western Hemisphere,'' so he listed Iran, Turkey and ''anyplace but Latin America'' as his three choices.

Soon Mr. Gouttierre was teaching English and coaching basketball in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Instead of the Peace Corps' standard two years, he stayed nearly 10. Then he came here to the University of Nebraska's Omaha campus, home to the nation's only Center for Afghanistan Studies and its largest library of works on Afghanistan. As dean of international studies, he visited 70-some nations before losing count, and has studied the Taliban and Osama bin Laden for the United Nations....

...THE Center for Afghanistan Studies was started in 1973 as the Omaha campus's attempt to break into international academics by focusing on an area few others considered. From 1986 to 1994, the university spent more than $50 million in grants training teachers and funneling textbooks to more than 130,000 students in Afghanistan and Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The library has 8,000 manuscripts and documents on the region, from an 1860 handwritten volume of poetry known as the Haft Aurang to the Afghan Communist Party's first newspaper a century later.

Mr. Gouttierre, who graduated from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, never finished his Ph.D., though he has three honorary doctorates....
Quote:

Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2002 Friday Home Edition
Section: Part A Main News; Part 1; Page 1; Foreign Desk
Headline: The World; Karzai Chosen As Leader, Vows To Rebuild Nation;

"Although challenged by two other candidates, his victory was preordained by the controversial influence of U.S. and other foreign advisors, which could taint the credibility of his tenure. Mohammad Zaher Shah, the nation's former king, <h3>withdrew from the political stage on the advice of President Bush's envoy [Zalmay Khalilzad].</h3> Former President Burhanuddin Rabbani's departure from the race is believed to have been arranged in return for a prestigious title to be bestowed later. Still, Karzai's selection--he received 1,295 of the 1,575 votes cast--clearly reflected majority sentiment among those gathered for the weeklong convocation. Even his rivals joined in the spirit of celebration over what they see as the beginning of a new age in their homeland."
Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...zai%2c%20Hamid
Traditional Council Elects Karzai as Afghan President

June 14, 2002, Friday
By CARLOTTA GALL (NYT); Foreign Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 14, Column 1, 1201 words

....The United States, which helped put him in power as part of its war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, openly backed his candidacy. The American envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, was on stage offering his congratulations this evening as the results were read inside the vast tent where the loya jirga has been meeting for several days.

<b>''He became a consensus candidate,'' said Mr. Khalilzad</b> in an interview after the election. ''It looked like he was going to win, and it happens often in Afghan loya jirgas when a victory looks inevitable, then they move towards a consensus.''

Mr. Karzai had won over the strongest challengers to his side earlier in the week, securing important endorsements from the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who ruled out any post for himself, as well as a former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and the strong Tajik faction in his own cabinet, including Defense Minister Muhammad Qasim Fahim. Mr. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun.

A final challenge came when royalists put forward their own candidate for chairman of the loya jirga on Wednesday. But when the chairmanship was won this morning by Ismail Qasimyar, a supporter of Mr. Karzai, it became clear that there was broad support for him.......
Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2589341.stm
Thursday, 19 December, 2002, 11:18 GMT
Afghan legal system under spotlight

...Mr Karzai has made it clear that Afghanistan, a predominantly Muslim society, <b>intends to maintain sharia law</b>, while at the same time establishing pluralistic democracy and an independent judiciary....
Quote:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middl..._khalizad.html
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad
In September 2001, Zalmay Khalilzad, now the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and a key player in the country's democratic process, was working as an obscure staffer in the National Security Council.

But as the Bush administration's war on terror unfolded after 9/11, Khalilzad, an Afghan-born Muslim with a background in Middle East policy, rose to a prominent role as an adviser, Zalmay Khalilzad intermediary and policymaker. He was appointed as a special presidential envoy to Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban, and in 2003, Khalilzad became U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

He helped acting Afghan President Hamid Karzai set up a transitional government in the country of his birth and oversaw its first democratic elections in late 2004.

President Bush appointed Khalilzad to replace John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to Iraq in June 2005 where his first task was negotiating a compromise between the Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis and secular groups over the constitution. He paid special attention to bringing Sunnis into the political process, especially after a coalition of Shiite parties won the most in parliamentary elections held in December 2005.

"The fundamental problem of Iraq is that the various communities are polarized along ethic and sectarian lines," Khalilzad told the NewsHour in February 2006. "And to deal with this problem, they need to form a national unity government, and that's what we are encouraging."

Khalilzad earned a reputation as a strategic thinker and one who can balance the complexity of politics in the Middle East with U.S. policy.

"He brings a lot more to bear than his predecessors, who knew nothing about Iraq. I wonder how many of our top decision-makers knew, a few years ago, the difference between Sunni and Shia," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter, in an interview with The New Yorker. "He is a broad-minded pragmatist and an insightful strategist. He has a unique advantage in a part of the world in which the United States has become massively engaged and does not have many people at the top equipped to deal with it."

In Iraq, Khalilzad lives in the Baghdad's Green Zone and travels in a security convoy often backed up with armed helicopters for air support. He works from his office in Saddam Hussein's former marble presidential palace supervising a staff of 5,000, the largest U.S. Embassy in the world.

Khalilzad was born in 1951 in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. His father worked in the local office of the ministry of finance. His mother, though illiterate, kept informed by having her children read the newspapers out loud to her.

His family moved to Kabul when he was in eighth grade. In high school he spent a year as an exchange student in California that he credits with giving him a different approach to his home country.

Khalilzad went on to attend Kabul University but transferred to the American University of Beirut after winning a scholarship. He studied political science and history of the Middle East in Beirut from 1970 to 1974. During this time, he met his wife Cheryl Bernard who was researching a dissertation on Arab nationalism. The couple has two sons.

In 1975, Khalilzad came to American to pursue his doctorate at the University of Chicago under the guidance of Albert Wohlstetter, an expert in military strategy who helped him make contacts in Washington. <h3>Wohlstetter exposed Khalilzad to the so-called neoconservative approach to foreign policy that places an emphasis on using America's military power.</h3>

Khalilzad accepted a teaching position in the political science department at Columbia in 1979 and wrote articles about the Soviet Union's invasion into Afghanistan that received considerable attention from experts. In 1984 he became an American citizen and accepted a fellowship with the Council on Foreign Relations.

From 1985-89, Khalilzad served as an adviser on Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war at the State Department where he wrote a policy paper that called for the U.S. to shift its focus from Iraq to Iran. He left the government for the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization where he founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

During the first Persian Gulf war, Khalilzad worked for the Defense Department as the assistant deputy undersecretary for policy where he received the Department of Defense medal for outstanding public service.

Convinced that the United States had left unfinished business after driving Iraq from Kuwait, Khalilzad encouraged then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to remove Saddam Hussein from power and continued to push for regime change in Iraq.

After the war, he was assigned to analyze America's strategic position in the post-Cold War world and helped draft the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992 that outlined a strategy for maintaining America's global hegemony using the threat of military force.

When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team at the Pentagon and was a counselor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In 2001, he moved to the National Security Council to become the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Southwest Asia, Near East and North African Affairs.
<b>Bush's "caliphate" message:</b> continued in next post....

host 10-18-2006 11:17 AM

...and this is the manipulated message....courtesy of the US government and the "Lincoln Group", that you've apparently bought into. It's as contrived and irrational, IMO, as Bush's description of how Saddam could have "avoided war".
Quote:

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/di...9BPuH0.5717432
27 May 2004
U.S. Will Retain Command of Its Forces in Iraq, Powell Says

........SECRETARY POWELL: When I was Chairman at the end of the Cold War and I was testifying one day, I said, well, you know, the Soviet Union is gone, the Warsaw Pact is gone, you know, I'm running out of enemies. .........
You're "at war" with an "islamic fascist" "caliphate" bogeyman, that was created and produced by your own president and his government. <b>I am not !</b>
Quote:

http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2005/..._the_prez.html
<b>More Fatwas from the Prez</b>

........Now, how exactly could Saddam have avoided war? <b>By ridding himself of weapons that he didn’t have?</b> Iraq delivered a massive volume, tens of thousands of pages of documents, detailing everything about its nonexistent WMD program to the UN in December, 2002. He allowed UN inspectors access to every nook and cranny of the country. I think we know which party chose war.

Or this:

It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that.

Well, that’s easy. To find out what went wrong, Mr. Bush, ask your vice president, who pressured the CIA to find what couldn’t be found, namely, Iraq’s WMD. Again and again, Cheney insisted that the CIA go back and sift the same data. Or ask Rummy, whose Feith-based intelligence shop cherry-picked tidbits to support the obsessive desire to go to war.

Or this nonsense:

[The terrorists’] stated objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of the Middle East so they can gain control of Iraq and use that country as a base from which to launch attacks against America, overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East, and establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia.

That may be their stated objective. But the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst believed it could create a new Symbionese state on the ruins of America, too. <b>Does Bush actually think he can scare America with the specter of some imaginary Evil Caliphate? Oh, right. He does.</b>
Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0051214-1.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 14, 2005

<b>President Discusses Iraqi Elections, Victory in the War on Terror</b>

....The stakes in Iraq are high, and we will not leave until victory has been achieved. (Applause.) Today there's an intense debate about the importance of Iraq to the war on terror. The constant headlines about car bombings and killings have led some to ask whether our presence in Iraq has made America less secure. This view presumes that if we were not in Iraq, the terrorists would be leaving us alone. The reality is that the terrorists have been targeting America for years, long before we ever set foot in Iraq.

We were not in Iraq in 1993, when the terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. We were not in Iraq in 1998, when the terrorists bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were not in Iraq in 2000, when the terrorists killed 17 American sailors aboard the USS Cole. There wasn't a single American soldier in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, when the terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people in the worst attack on our home since Pearl Harbor.

These acts are part of a grand strategy by the terrorists. Their stated objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of the Middle East so they can gain control of Iraq and use that country as a base from which to launch attacks against America, overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East, <h3>and establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia.</h3> Hear the words of the terrorists. In a letter to the terrorist leader Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader Zawahiri has outlined plans that will unfold in several stages. These are his words: "... Expel the Americans from Iraq. ... Establish an Islamic authority over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq... Extend the jihad wave to secular countries neighboring Iraq." End quote. ....
Quote:

http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2005/...caliphate.html
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss on December 2, 2005 01:15 PM
<b>Bush V. the Evil Caliphate</b>

Eric Edelman is still lying for the Vice President. Edelman, from 2001, served as Dick Cheney's chief adviser on matters related to national security and Iraq. Since then Edelman has succeeded Douglas Feith, the man who ran the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, as undersecretary of defense for policy. And he is still lying on Cheney's behalf. I caught up with him yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations. More on that, in a second. First, some background.

Three years ago, the Bush-Cheney team told us over and over that it was necessary to attack Iraq because Iraq was a central front in the war on terrorism. Right after 9/11, we now know, Bush personally insisted that Iraq was the chief culprit in that attack, even though the CIA demonstrated decisively that Al Qaeda was responsible for it and that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq. Vice President Cheney was the lead Liar-in-Chief about alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, insisting for example that Iraqi spies met with AQ operatives in Prague and repeatedly linking Baghdad to bin Laden. None of these ties existed. But we went to war anyway.

Now that the war is underway, and going badly, President Bush and his minions are still insisting, against all evidence, that Iraq is still at the heart of the war on terrorism. In his recent Annapolis speech, in the hefty Victory in Iraq document, and in other statements from administration officials, the Bush team is still misrepresenting the enemy. In fact, our real opponents in Iraq are not Al Qaeda, but the Iraqi resistance led by secular Baathists, former Iraqi military and intelligence officials, and a vast underground army of unhappy Sunnis, what U.S. intelligence calls POI's ("pissed off Iraqis"). But just as Bush lied about the terrorist threat from Iraq in 2003, he is doing it again: he is claiming that the real enemy in Iraq are Al Qeda-linked jihadists -- even though virtually all analysts of the war in Iraq say that the jihadists are only about 4 per cent of the fighters that U.S. forces face.

<h3>Which brings us to Edelman. Speaking at CFR yesterday, Edelman cited a long list of jihadist web site ravings, including one in which he quoted bin Laden claiming that the jihadists' goal in Iraq was to turn that country into the base for a new, worldwide Caliphate, a political-religious empire that Edelman warned would take over first the Middle East, then Europe, then the world.</h3> He ignored the reality that whatever outlandish claims bin Laden makes (and bin Laden is not in Iraq and has little leverage even over the small band of jihadists there), there is no chance that bin Laden's wild fantasies could come true. Certainly they do not represent an existential threat to world security, except in the sense that Al Qaeda can blow up things in London or Madrid. But Edelman presented the war in Iraq as the only way to prevent bin Laden from creating his worldwide Evil Calipjhate. (In the press corps, sitting in the back, there were audible titters at the stupidity of Edelman's claims.)....
Quote:

http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2006/...ate_again.html
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss on February 21, 2006 10:09 AM
The Evil Caliphate, Again

The latest (official) incarnation of the Evil Caliphate is contained in a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing, which posits that the U.S. enemy in the Long War is made up of at least 12 million Muslims who want to establish an empire to battle the United States. The briefing was reported by the Washington Times. An excerpt:

The briefing was prepared for Rear Adm. William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy within the Joint Staff, which is under Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. Adm. Sullivan used it to deliver a lecture in January to a national security study group at Mississippi State University.

Bin Laden, the Joint Staff paper says, wants to "expand the Muslim empire to historical significance." And Iraq "has become the focus of the enemy's effort. If they win in Iraq, they have a base from which to expand their terror. ... Extremists now have an Emirate in Iraq that serves as a base of operations <b>from which they can revive the Caliphate [Islamic rule]. ... Baghdad becomes the capital of the Caliphate. The revived Caliphate</b> now turns its attention to the destruction of Israel."

Adm. Sullivan's briefing contains a map that shows the bin Laden-style caliphate conquering North and East Africa, the entire Middle East and Central and South Asia.

To me it sounds like the Protocols of the Elders of Islam. It’s nonsense, of course. As I’ve been writing for years now, the people we are fighting in Iraq are Baathists and former military officials and Sunni tribal and clan leaders, not Caliphate-mongers and bin Laden’s cronies. Is Adm. Sullivan’s intelligence that bad?
Quote:

http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2006/...otherhood.html
January 03, 2006
The Neocon Brotherhood

The decision today by the Iraqi Islamic Party to take part in the gestating Iraqi government is important news, but not good news. There’s at least an outside chance that the IIP’s decision was partly the result of a U.S. covert operation by the Pentagon.

First of all, the news. The Iraqi Islamic Party is a branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood, the same fraternity that runs Hamas and the organization in Egypt that just won a big bloc of seats in the new Egyptian national assembly. It’s a Wahhabi-inspired, back-to-basics fundamentalist party that does, indeed, want to create the worldwide Muslim caliphate that President Bush is constantly warning us about. It is Sunni, and in the recent elections, the IIP was the mainstay for the Iraqi Accordance Front, one of the main Sunni parties in the Dec. 15 elections. the IIP-led Accordance Front represented the religious Sunnis, while another bloc represented the secular (and neo-Baathist) Sunnis. It is at least the third time that the IIP broke ranks with the opposition: when it joined the earlier Iraqi interim government, when it decided in October to support the constitution draft, and now its decision to join the Shiite-led coalition.

The IIP decision angered its erstwhile allies, as expected. <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002717034_webiraq02.html">Reported the AP</a>:

"We were shocked today when we heard that our brothers, who signed agreements with us yesterday to discuss just the fraudulent elections with the Kurdish leaders, instead were discussing forming a national unity government," Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of the Sunni Arab National Dialogue Front, told The Associated Press.

What’s interesting here is an apparently covert relationship that has been developing between the IIP and the Pentagon, in part through the secretive Lincoln Group, the PR firm that planted paid propaganda in Iraqi media for the DOD. The New York Times <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/02/MNGKAGG5H61.DTL">revealed yesterday</a> that the Lincoln Group also had Sunni Iraqi clerics on its covert payroll:

<h3>Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, was told early in 2005 by the Pentagon to identify religious leaders who could help craft messages that would persuade Sunnis in violence-ridden Anbar province to participate in national elections and reject the insurgency, according to a former employee.</h3>

Since then, the company has retained three or four Sunni religious scholars to offer advice and write reports for military commanders on the content of propaganda campaigns, the former employee said. But documents and Lincoln executives say the firm's ties to religious leaders and dozens of other prominent Iraqis are aimed also at enabling it to exercise influence in Iraqi communities on behalf of clients, including the military.

"We do reach out to clerics. We meet with local government officials and with local businessmen," Paige Craig, a Lincoln executive vice president, said in an interview. "We need to have relationships that are broad enough and deep enough that we can touch all the various aspects of society."

It isn’t clear if the Lincoln Group was dealing exclusively, or even primarily, with Muslim Brotherhood-linked clerics. But it ought be noted that one of Lincoln’s paid consultants, according to the Times, was Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. And Rubin is a co-thinker of AEI’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is on record (in his book, The Islamic Paradox) saying that the Muslim Brotherhood ought to be a main partner of the United States in the region.
Quote:

http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2006/...ate_again.html
Bush on the Caliphate, Again

Four times yesterday Bush talked about the evil “caliphate” that radicals want to create. Unlike in the past, though, he spoke about it as if it already existed, accusing his imagined enemy of trying to “extend the caliphate” and “spread their caliphate.” <h3>I wish some reporter had the guts to ask the president to explain what he means, to explain what he thinks a caliphate is, and how a rag-tag band of Al Qaeda types hiding in Pakistan can conquer the land from Spain to Indonesia, which is what Bush keeps warning about.</h3>

Here are the relevant excerpts (you can read the whole transcript here):

The strategic goal is to help this young democracy succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate.

The stakes couldn't be any higher, as I said earlier, in the world in which we live. There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives. And they want us to leave. And they want to topple government. They want to extend an ideological caliphate that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs.

And they have objectives. They want to -- they want to drive us out of parts of the world to establish a caliphate. It's what they have told us.

It would give these people a chance to plot and plan and attack. It would give them resources from which to continue their efforts to spread their caliphate.
<b>...again with the blood (of American troops) for oil "line", and the "caliphate" bullshit:</b>
Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101100922.html
Transcript
News Conference

CQ Transcripts Wire
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; 1:05 PM

OCTOBER 11, 2006

SPEAKER: GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

...BUSH: The enemy's doing everything within its power to destroy the government and to drive us out of the Middle East, starting with driving us out of Iraq before the mission is done....

<h3>....We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves</h3> that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West......

...QUESTION: Senator Warner says Iraq appears to be drifting sideways. And James Baker says a change in strategy may be needed.

Are you willing to acknowledge that a change may be needed?

BUSH: We're constantly changing tactics to achieve a strategic goal. Our strategic goal is a country which can defend itself, sustain itself and govern itself.

The strategic goal is to help this young democracy succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate.

The stakes couldn't be any higher, as I said earlier, in the world in which we live. <b>There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives.</b> And they want us to leave. And they want to topple government. They want to extend an <b>ideological caliphate</b> that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs.

<b>BUSH: They want to control oil resources</b> and they want to plot and plan and attack us again. That's their objectives.

And so -- and our strategic objective is to prevent them from doing that. And we're constantly changing tactics to achieve that objective. And I appreciate Senator Warner going over there and taking a look.

I want you to notice what he did say is: If the plan is now not working, the plan that's in place isn't working, America needs to adjust. I completely agree. That's what I talked to General Casey about.

I said: General, the Baghdad security plan is in its early implementation. I support you strongly but, if you come into this office and say we need to do something differently, I support you. If you need more troops, I support you. If you're going to devise a new strategy, we're with you. Because I trust General Casey to make the judgments necessary to put the tactics in place to help us achieve an objective.

And I appreciate Jimmy Baker's willingness to -- he and Lee Hamilton are putting this -- they got a group they put together that -- I think it was Congressman Wolf's suggestion -- or passed into law.

BUSH: We supported the idea. I think it's good to have some of our elder statesmen -- I hate to call Baker an elder statesman -- but to go over there and take a look and to come back and make recommendations.

Somebody said he said, "Well, you know, cut-and-run isn't working." That's not our policy.

Our policy is to help this country succeed, because I understand the stakes. And I'm going to repeat them one more time. As a matter of fact, I'm going to spend a lot of time repeating the stakes about what life is like in the Middle East.

It is conceivable that there will be a world in which radical forms -- <b>extreme forms of religion fight each other for influence in the Middle East; in which they've got the capacity to use oil as an economic weapon....</b>
Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15239205/site/newsweek/
By Lisa Miller And Matthew Philips
Newsweek
Updated: 4:11 p.m. ET Oct. 12, 2006

Oct. 12, 2006 - When President George W. Bush starts using fifty-cent words in press conferences, one has to wonder why, and on Wednesday, during his Rose Garden appearance, he used the word “caliphate” four times. The enemy, he said—by which he clearly meant the Islamic terrorist enemy—wants to “extend the caliphate,” “establish a caliphate,” and “spread their caliphate.” Caliphate? Really? Many people live long, fruitful lives without once using the word caliphate. Almost no one, with the exception of our president and some of his advisers, uses it as a pejorative.

As NEWSWEEK reported last month, the president and the people who prep him are still clearly casting about for the right phrase to pin on America’s elusive enemy. “Axis of evil” is outdated by now. “Islamist,” the preferred choice of scholars, has been deemed too jargony and academic. “Islamofascist” is a recent favorite, and in a speech last month the president used it as punctuation in a litany of other tags, notably “Islamic radicalism” and “militant jihadism.” The beauty of “caliphate” is that no one but students of Islamic history have much more than a vague idea of what it means. “Bush has been successful in defining terms in his own way,” said Steve Ebbins, a former Democratic speechwriter. “[The Bush administration] has captured the language. If you control the language, you control the message and are able to sway people’s attitude toward your policy. It’s a policy-endorsing mechanism.” Until last January, the president rarely used it, if ever. Since then, he’s used it more than 15 times.

A caliphate, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is the “office or dominion of a caliph”; a caliph is “a successor of Muhammad ... [the] spiritual head of Islam.” Simply put, the caliph is Islam’s deputy to the world. After the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 A.D., his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, became the first caliph. (At the heart of the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims, even today, is the question of succession: who has the right to become Islam’s caliph?) From the time of the Prophet’s death until the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, caliphs ruled over Muslims and presided over the Muslim expansion throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. These were the caliphates; some beneficent, some warmongering, in concept not unlike any other empire or dynasty.

In fairness, Bush isn’t the first person in recent history to appropriate the word caliphate and use it as a weapon. Osama bin Laden did it himself, most notably three years ago, in his statement to the United Sates via Al-Jazeera. “Baghdad, the seat of the caliphate, will not fall to you, God willing,” he said, “and we will fight you as long as we carry our guns.” Bin Laden’s rhetoric evoked, as it often does, an earlier, golden era of Islam, one that exists more in his imagination than in the lawless, crumbling city of Baghdad today. Backers of the war in Iraq—Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, not to mention hawks like Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania—jumped on the word and used it in speeches dozens of times.

Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American Islamic Relations, says bin Laden’s word choices distort Islam for the world, and he wishes the president would take more care. When Ahmed heard “caliphate” Wednesday morning, he thought of the way Bush used the word “crusade” after September 11. “There’s a fundamental misunderstanding with the president and his advisers on core Islamic issues,” Ahmed said. “He’s getting bad advice, they’re misinformed on Islamic terminology.” Either that, or he’s making a strategic rhetorical choice.
Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011301816.html
Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical
Restoration of Caliphate, Attacked by Bush, Resonates With Mainstream Muslims

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 14, 2006; Page A01

ISTANBUL -- The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly.

But if the audacious scheme prefigured Sept. 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam's caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world's Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Muhammad.

The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the heart of the radical Islamic ideology Bush has warned of repeatedly in recent major speeches on terrorism. In language evoking the Cold War, Bush has cast the conflict in Iraq as the pivotal battleground in a larger contest between advocates of freedom and those who seek to establish "a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia."

The enthusiasm of the extremists for that vision is not disputed. However unlikely its realization, the ambition may help explain terrorist acts that often appear beyond understanding. When Osama bin Laden called the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "a very small thing compared to this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years," the reference was to the aftermath of World War I, when the last caliphate was suspended as European powers divided up the Middle East. Al Qaeda named its Internet newscast, which debuted in September, "The Voice of the Caliphate."

Yet the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing. But Muslims regard themselves as members of the umma , or community of believers, that forms the heart of Islam. And as earthly head of that community, the caliph is cherished both as memory and ideal, interviews indicate.

That reservoir of respect represents a risk for the Bush administration as it addresses an issue closely watched by a global Islamic population estimated at 1.2 billion. Already, many surveys show that since the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslims almost universally have seen the war against terrorism as a war on Islam.

"Why do you keep invading Muslim countries?" asked Kerem Acar, a tailor in central Istanbul. "I won't live to see it, and my children won't, but one day maybe my children's children will see someone declare himself the caliph, like the pope, and have an impact."

The issue comes into sharp relief in Turkey, which is often held up as a democratic model for other Muslim nations but where empathy with fellow believers runs deep -- as Karen Hughes, a presidential adviser and undersecretary of state, was reminded in September when angry complaints about civilian casualties in Iraq dominated a public appearance in Ankara, the capital.

Here, the last caliph, an urbane scholar, Abdulmecid Efendi, was unseated in March 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the charismatic military officer who conceived modern Turkey as an exemplar of the system that places sovereignty in the nation-state rather than faith. Importing from France the notion that religion had no place in public life, Ataturk decreed that Islamic religious law was second to "the rule of law" by the state.

Ataturk's mausoleum, on a hilltop where Turkish officials had gathered to honor his memory, was ground zero for the 1998 plot. Its ringleader, Metin Kaplan, was imprisoned in Turkey after being extradited from Germany, where he was known as the "Caliph of Cologne." Many Turks found the grandiloquent title less than amusing, said Husnu Tuna, his attorney.

"People called me when I took this case and asked, 'Why are you defending a person who lowers the value of an Islamic concept?' " Tuna said. "I heard that both from individuals and from officials, including police and security."

Caliph, from the Arabic word khalifa , means successor to the prophet Muhammad. Competition for the title caused the schism between Shiite and Sunni lines of the faith, and the Shiites soon stopped selecting caliphs. But in the dominant Sunni tradition, the office embodied the ultimate religious and political authority, enabling Ottoman sultans to hold together an empire across three continents for more than 500 years. Ataturk appealed to Muslim solidarity in the battle to drive European powers off the Anatolian peninsula after World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.........

highthief 10-18-2006 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hiredgun
I'm sorry you find my experiences implausible, highthief. They are mine, and true, although I don't make any particular claims as to how far they can be generalized. My connections to Pakistan are largely friends and family, and as you can imagine, it would not be easy to support anti-American terror when you have loved ones living in the bullseye.

I'm not saying you are being untruthful, but often people hear things but don't file them away, especially when they may find themselves in a position of conflict between conflicting ideologies and loyalties. It happened in Europe in WW2, it happens in Israel and Palestine today, and I am pretty sure it happens to a large number of Muslims, also (Americans too, for that matter).

Polls such as this:

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1766106.htm

lend some credence to the idea that support for terrorism, while hardly universal as some on Team Bush like to claim, is nevertheless, substantial even in nations like Indonesia, a somewhat less hard line Muslim nation than many others.

And this one:

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248

Seaver 10-18-2006 01:28 PM

Ok Host, so Karzi is a proven ally with strong tribal roots in Afghanistan and a deep understanding of the culture. So obviously using him to aid our interests proves that Islamiscism is simply made up in order for Bush to declare war.

Sorry, if we weren't using Karzi's expertise in the region I would be pissed.

ubertuber 10-18-2006 01:59 PM

Ustwo quite sniping this thread. If you want to be here, at least attempt to contribute some substance.

dc_dux 10-18-2006 02:45 PM

Foreign Affairs magazine conducted a survey recently on "Public Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy:
Quote:

A general finding:
Americans are looking out on a world where they see growing dangers, few solutions and little in U.S. foreign policy that seems to be working. ... Our first indicator shows that public anxiety on international affairs is at high levels (a score of 130 on a 200-point scale), enough to show a deep dissatisfaction with current policies.

On Islam, terrorism and the Middle East:
On the plus side, the public gives the government good grades on some elements of the war on terror. Some 56 percent assign the government an "A" or "B" grade for giving the war on terror the attention it deserves, and 47 percent give high grades for hunting down terrorists.

There has been an increase in the number of those who say they worry a lot about the rise of Islamic extremism, from 31 percent in January to 38 percent now, and only 18 percent say they don't worry about it at all. Fifty percent of Americans say at least half of the world's Muslims are anti-American.

But although worry is up, the public has doubts about our ability to solve the problem. Only 1 in 5 Americans (19%) gives the United States an "A" or "B" grade for "having good relations and reputation with Muslim countries," while twice as many (39%) give a "D" or "F." Nearly three-quarters worry that our actions in the Middle East are aiding the recruitment of terrorists, with 37 percent saying they worry "a lot." That's up four points since January. (The survey was in the field before the controversy over a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that the war in Iraq has led to increased jihadist recruitment.)

About half the public (53%) say "improved communication and dialogue with the Muslim world will reduce hatred of the U.S." Yet only 36 percent say "establishing good relations with moderate Muslims" is something the government can do a lot about. Few believe "doing more to help Muslim countries develop economically" would help the nation's security a great deal (20%, down from 27% in June 2005).

http://www.confidenceinforeignpolicy...cy_mideast.htm
What is most striking is the finding that "nearly three-quarters worry that our actions in the Middle East are aiding the recruitment of terrorists."

If that overwhelming majority of Americans surveyed feel that our policies are aiding the recruitment of terrorists, isnt it logical that moderate muslims around the world would have the same sentiment?

I would put myself among the 53% who believe that "improved communication and dialogue with the Muslim world will reduce hatred of the U.S."

There is no guarantee of success and certainly nothing we, or any outsiders do will have an immediate impact, but IMO, dialogue and a change in policy would be a step in the right direction.

Ch'i 10-18-2006 03:25 PM

Ustwo, stevo, mojo, ect: You've made a claim that Islam causes violence, but have yet to prove it.

Seaver 10-18-2006 03:37 PM

I dont see anywhere where they said Islam causes terrorism. They said that Islam and it's history more than lends itself to this mentality. That the warlike and aggressive nature of Muhammad and his companions early on in the religion's history reverberate itself today and fuels the fires of terrorism.

They posted statistics which help their argument that many Muslims, even Westernized Muslims, openly support terrorism and state that it is allowed by Islam.

Never did they state that Islam leads to terrorism, that the Arabs/Turks/Egyptians/(Fill in race here) are savages or are born terrorists. Never did they state that if you are Muslim you hate the West and want to kill innocents.

NCB 10-18-2006 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ch'i
Ustwo, stevo, mojo, ect: You've made a claim that Islam causes violence, but have yet to prove it.

How many people have to be killed in the name of religion before it becomes "provable" for you? 1000? 10000? Whats the number?

Ch'i 10-18-2006 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver
I dont see anywhere where they said Islam causes terrorism.

I said violence, as did the one I directed my post towards:
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
There has to be some correlation attesting to the idea that violence and Islam are related.

. . . . . . . . . . . .
Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB
How many people have to be killed in the name of religion before it becomes "provable" for you? 1000? 10000? Whats the number?

I fail to see the connection between killings in the name of a religion and Islam causing this violence. Don't confuse the two.

Seaver 10-18-2006 05:01 PM

Quote:

There has to be some correlation attesting to the idea that violence and Islam are related.
As my Psychology teacher pounded into our heads, "Correlation does not equal Causation." Correlation means they have a similarity, as in when one increases another does (or decreases) in a relatively close scale. Now it is a fact that if you rule out Islamic terrorists, the level of terrorism acts in the world dramatically decreases (though there still are acts).

Willravel 10-18-2006 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB
How many people have to be killed in the name of religion before it becomes "provable" for you? 1000? 10000? Whats the number?

Yes, the name of religon kills. Because we've agreed on that fact, the next logical conclusion is to stop all religon. We should probably start with the biggest, theoritically saving the most people from death fastest. Which is the biggest religon, again? I'm trying to remember. It's like Judism and Islam, but not quite. It has followers in the highest eschelons of our own government. It rhymes with "fisty annity".


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