Why Liberals Fear Islam?

[Nur]

Why Liberals Fear Islam

 

The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim

 

By M. JUNAID LEVESQUE-ALAM

 

28/08/08 "Counterpunch" - -- For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter.

 

Disappointment has often been self-inflicted. Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or the death penalty - only to see these wishful words unceremoniously erased by presidential politics or the senator’s own views.

 

But for American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired.

 

First we witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of micro-level ethnic cleansing when two Arab women with headscarves were whisked offstage ahead of a campaign photo-op in Detroit. Then we heard Obama call false claims about his purportedly Muslim identity “smears” – as if he was accused not of belonging to an Abrahamic faith observed by more than 1.2 billion people, but of slinking out of Congress to visit a brothel. Soon after we saw the senator genuflect before AIPAC and call for a permanently Israeli Jerusalem - a vision the Jewish state has assiduously tried to realize by macro-level ethnic cleansing, purging its Arab residents.

 

A more recent political maneuver also turned out to be a purge: the Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, “resigned” this month after a brief stint of several days. The event went almost unnoticed.

 

But two sharply different responses to this episode - and the standing afforded to the authors of these responses - reveal that the senator is not alone in failing to stanch America’s anti-Islamic miasma. Rather, the shortcoming is a collective one, shared by many liberals whose prejudice against Muslims and Arab-Americans is surpassed only by an apparent disinterest in correcting it.

 

One response to the resignation came from James Zogby. An Arab-American Christian, Zogby’s credentials as a man rooted in his community are matchless. He helped found the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He led non-sectarian campaigns to assist war victims in Palestine and Lebanon. And he serves as president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

 

Yet despite 30 years of community advocacy and experience, his views on Arab and Muslim issues appear in just two popular non-ethnic publications. One is The Huffington Post. The other is in Egypt.

 

Commenting on Asbahi’s short tenure, Zogby writes, “In the brief time he held his position we spoke almost daily. He learned so much and did so much to make Arab Americans and American Muslims feel included in the campaign.”

 

“Then,” Zogby observes, “it happened.” One of the many websites “monitoring” Muslims in America discovered that eight years ago Asbahi served on a board which included a controversial imam. Asbahi resigned from the board after two weeks.

 

Like vultures eyeing a wounded gazelle, the usual assortment of right-wing bloggers descended on Asbahi. They vilified him as a closet fundamentalist for once belonging to the Muslim Student Association, a well-established mainstream group with branches on dozens of college campuses across the U.S. and Canada.

 

Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal threatened to amplify the echo chamber, the walls of which reverberate with the hysterics of its associates in the right-wing “blogosphere.”

 

Faced with mounting pressure and bereft of support from any quarter, Asbahi and the campaign “agreed” he would relinquish his post.

 

This sequence of events comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with neoconservative methods. It is but a reenactment of previous attacks: the mendacious 2005 campaign to oust Columbia University professors who used Israel’s own archives to dismantle pleasant fictions about its history; the dissemination of e-mails containing crude anti-Semitic nonsense sent out in professors’ names to destroy their credibility; and the ongoing efforts to publicly intimidate universities into denying academics employment or tenure.

 

But amid the past few years of attacks, outrages, and, yes, smears, hurled at Muslims and Arabs in this country, one Muslim figure stands curiously unsullied: Irshad Manji. She, too, wrote about Asbahi’s dismissal, though we would do well to acquaint ourselves with the author first.

 

Unlike most of her coreligionists, Manji has been lavished with attention and awards by mainstream and liberal America. She garnered Oprah Winfrey’s first “Chutzpah” award, Ms. Magazine’s “Feminist for the 21st Century” seal of approval, New York University’s Wagner School “Moral Courage Project,” a column in The Huffington Post, production of a PBS documentary, and the list goes on.

 

In an era when Muslims find themselves boxed in by political attacks here and military assaults abroad, one wonders: what is Manji’s secret to success?

 

She wrote a book - and not just any book. Titled The Trouble With Islam Today, hers won applause not only from liberals but other, more interesting quarters. The Wall Street Journal praised it as “refreshingly provocative” and “deserv[ing] of the attention it is receiving.” Daniel Pipes declared, “Manji - a practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her subject.” Phyillis Chesler beamed, “Manji has written a bold, sane, passionate, compelling book.” And Alan Dershowitz announced, “Manji is a fresh, new and intriguing voice of Islamic reform.”

 

A fine example of damning with loud praise.

 

What could a Muslim have written that would delight supporters of bombing and torturing Muslims? What sweet words could have moved Daniel Pipes - who specializes in hyping anti-Islamic hysteria on Fox News and elsewhere - to welcome into his generous bosom the ideas of a “practicing Muslim?” What might motivate Alan Dershowitz, better known for backing the torture of Muslims than for reading their books, to plug Manji’s effort?

 

The answer lies in the content. The Trouble With Islam Today is an unhinged polemic that derides Muslims and demeans their faith. Examining a few of the book’s points should reveal what has caught the fancy of neoconservatives and liberals alike.

 

The author devotes two pages to comparing Osama bin Laden to Prophet Muhammad. “Is it mere happenstance,” Manji rhetorically asks, “that bin Laden spends so much time in caves, like the meditating [Prophet] did?” With penetrating and piercing logic - in the sense that one must penetrate one’s skull and pierce the cortex to succumb to it - she goes on in this vein, declaring “camel saddles” and “online transactions” twin evils. The “parallels” between Osama, the man who blesses the murder of innocent people, and Muhammad, the man who forgave the murderers of his closest companions, “continue to proliferate,” Manji insists, much to the delight of the Muslim-haters behind the curtains.

 

A good portion of the book is also dedicated to attacking the Quran (and the Quran alone), which the intrepid author does without any background in religious studies or a single footnote. But no matter. This book, Manji intones, is “profoundly at war with itself.” Religious texts should apparently read like do-it-yourself plumbing guides, bereft of subtlety or layers of meaning, particularly if you are trying to flush the whole thing down the toilet to boost your celebrity status among Islamophobes.

 

Manji’s fans must especially enjoy her excoriation of Muslims as fake victims. Muslims wallow in their “screaming self-pity,” she snickers, as though one ought to see the fuselage of cruise missiles as half-full rather than half-empty as they fly en route to the nearest wedding celebration or apartment building.

 

Manji’s attacks on Muslims appear almost kind next to the beating she doles out to logic itself. She surmises that since Muslims have been more harmed by Muslims than non-Muslims (based on what data or criteria, we dare not guess), there is little reason to complain about atrocities authored under the “war on terror.” She does not add whether she also ordered families of Sept. 11th victims to get over themselves when the casualties were surpassed by that year’s domestic homicides - a case of “Americans having been more harmed by Americans than non-Americans.”

 

Finally, Manji enjoys ridiculing dispossessed Palestinians. Ignoring over two decades of work by Jewish scholars and human rights groups on Israeli ethnic cleansing and massacres, she neatly eliminates the Palestinians altogether by dubbing them Jordanians and hails Israel for its “compassion.” It must have been precisely this “compassion” that moved 23 ANC veterans, several of them Jewish, to compare the Israeli occupation with South African apartheid during a recent visit.

 

Now well-acquainted with America’s favorite Muslim, let us turn to her article on the departure of Obama’s former coordinator, Mazen Asbahi.

 

In a Huffington Post piece, she demonstrates no concern about the vilification enabled Asbahi’s dismissal. Indeed, she fails to mention it even once. Is this because Manji is too busy contributing to the problem to pause and reflect? Or is it because this would upset her core base - the neoconservatives who mount these smear campaigns?

 

Whatever the case, Manji performs her predictable pre-programmed attack routine, observing contemptuously, “…Mazen Asbahi has just resigned. I can't say I'm disheartened. He'd been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and ‘moderate’ double-speak.”

 

Writing a piece occasioned by attacks on one Muslim, Manji manages to magnify the insult by attacking thousands of other Muslims.

 

According to her politics, anyone who does not dance to the detonation of cluster bombs is already suspect. So her invective aimed at groups representing thousands of American Muslims, which she never bothers to back up with arguments, is understandable.

 

Not yet satisfied with herself, she goes on to pant about “most” American Muslims being stuck in a 7th century - or perhaps 10th century, depending on her mood - “time warp.” Serving as 21st century America’s doctors, teachers, engineers, shopkeepers, and plant workers, Muslims have been too busy to notice this worrisome defect.

Concluding with a few shopworn words about “moral courage” and “revolutionary ethos,” Manji polishes off her attacks on the community by invoking vague platitudes about Muslim “reform.”

This is Manji’s sole gimmick: disingenuous calls for Muslims to move forward belied by support for those pulling America backward.

 

What does the liberal adulation of a professional Islamophobe - one openly adored by neoconservatives, no less - say about the state of American liberalism? Will liberals come to respect and support genuine Muslim and Arab voices, like Zogby and countless unrecognized figures? Or will they continue to lazily rely on self-professed stand-ins like Irshad Manji?

 

If liberalism persists on its present path, it will not only alienate a targeted community in America but pave the way for further persecution.

 

Perfectly illustrating this point is The New York Times’ fawning characterization of Manji as “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” This is very far from the truth.

 

For years, many Muslim and non-Muslim voices have said bin Laden’s ideology is a freak phenomenon, fashioned in the ghoulish laboratory of Cold War politics and fed on a steady diet of American –Israeli assaults in the Middle East. At odds with more than 1,300 years of Muslim thought and history, these voices have insisted, bin Laden is a perversion of genuine Islam.

 

But Manji argues the opposite: bin Laden is a genuine product of Islam, which is itself perverted. Osama, we will recall, is for Manji the new Muhammad.

 

In showering attention and accolades on Manji, many liberals thus validate and promote the idea that extremist Islam is Islam itself. Could bin Laden dream of a greater gift? Could the neoconservatives?

 

Perhaps liberals find Manji’s message appealing because ascribing extremism to some innate feature of Islam “disappears” from view the consequences of American foreign policy. Invasion and occupation disappear. Torture and abuse disappear. Corpses of slaughtered civilians and carrions of neutralized nations disappear.

 

The desire to own a clear conscience, even one obtained through the muddiest logic, should never be underestimated.

 

There may be other answers: a fear of questioning the dominant narrative; of criticizing Israel; of discovering Islamic perspectives; of engaging the Other, who is often harangued but rarely heard.

 

Whatever the reason, American liberals would do well to stop glorifying anti-Muslim celebrities and start building relationships with honest Arab and Muslim voices.

 

We are waiting.

[Nur]

The fear of Islam is forcing western liberals and NeoCons alike to jump in bed with Anti-Muslim "Muslims"

 

But there is a problem with their choice.

 

You see Nomad, Islam and the Western values are mutually exclussive, belief in one of them means a disbelief in the other, but to each is (his/her) choice, right? wrong!

 

They see Islam as a faith that has to be gradually diluted, compromised, or if I may " Westernized " like Christianity and Judaism, our eastern cousin religions. You may ask, why can't they accept diversity of outlooks in life? dont be silly, because if they accept Islam as an equal value system, they will lose followers to Islam, Islam is the fastest growing faith on earth, most notable segment are the youth who are attracted to the No Alcohol, No Drugs, No Premarital Sex, clean lifestyle regimen of Islam, and Women! yes western women represent the majority of converts to Islam! isn't that weird? either the numebrs are lying or the media is, you decide which one. This dangerous trend is forcing Priests of the Western liberal ideals to rush to stop Islam's fire in its own natural habitat, its homelands, in Somalia and Afganistan with a genious dual pretexts of Terror and now, Piracy! before it spreads uncontrollably to the West.

 

 

To stop Islam at its homelands, Zionist owned western media needs to create its own version of "Islamic Leaders", their choice is always to make a hero out of any Self hating " Muslim " who considers western values to be superior to Islamic values.

 

In Somalia, our society has radically changed from a non-observant Muslim society to a staunchly pro-Islmic society in the last 17 years in the absence of a "government". Many western educated Somali secularists found themselves as foreigners in their own country, the dreaded Hijab is now replacing the 1970ies mini-skirts and sexy transparent Dirac worn by Somali women while bearded young men are increasingly visibly roaming the country. The nation has transformed quite the opposite to the wishes of the architects of westernization in Somalia and the old breed are fast disappearing.

 

Today, a transformation of idealogy is taking deep roots in Somalia dating back to the fall of Siad Barre government, no longer are the "Wadaads" a bunch of ignorant zealot religious students ( Xer) reading Holy Quraan at funerals or blessing houses on Wednesdays, the new breed of wadaads are converts from western secularism, many have lived in the west for years and failed to find happiness in that system. These intellectuals who are armed with a sound knowledge of western system and the Islamic faith, are outnumbering the Somali secularists who failed to earn the respect of elders in their respective clans, and Somali people at large. The Somali people's resistance against foreign domination and slavery is becoming a tough call to suppress, their demands for a just national government based on the people's choice of Islam is impossible to stop. The harder the Zionist Media tries to muffle their voices, the more naked the western system will appear to the people of Somalia who will determine who wins the streets.

 

If a fair and free election is held in Somalia today, Islamists will win in a landslide like Gaza and Algeria. So, the creation of chaos by military intervention to prolong the agony of this free spirited nation is the only strategy the west hopes will brake their will to accept the Anti- Islam "Muslims" as leaders for Somalis, hence the Western Media's showering of our traitors with Honor Medals. Dont be surprised if the 2009 Nobel for Peace is shared between Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Gendai Frazer of USA, a Somali Moderate Islamist of the Djibouti ICU Faction, The entire TFG Somali Parliament of Baidoa and one of the peaceful Nomads on SOL forums.

 

You know something is wrong when Democracy means the appointment of a Somali Government by the US and Ethiopia, when America's allies in Somalia are the most hated criminlas who have maintained anarchy in Somalia for 17 years and who have committed war crimes of biblical proportions. Imagine asking a Jew to accept a Nazi for a leader? That is exactly how the Somali people feel about the CIA supported Client Warlord Government known as the TFG ( Transitional Federal Government) dubed ( Transplanted Foreign Government )

 

So, these days the west is fueling another divison in the ranks of Islamists who are opposing the US-Ethiopian supported TFG allies, by accepting one of the factions as " Moderates " while demonising the other as " Extremists ".

 

Naturally, when an enemy occupier approves a resistance faction against another, the objective is not to make peace, its an enemy tactic to cause a division to weaken both of them. The so called "Moderates" come in two flavors:

 

1. Genuinely honest Muslims who are not aware of the end game in the " Negotiations"

 

2. Anti-Islam " Muslims"

 

While, the "Exremists" come in three falovors:

 

1. Genuine Honest Muslims who understand the endgame of the occupiers and their masters.

 

2. Genuine honest Muslims who do not understand the endgame.

 

3. Embedded Anti Islam "Muslims" who lead the pack to a cliff in coordination with the occupiers, buffalo style. This group is dangerous, they play the role of devout Muslims, they coerce the ignorant followers to fall in a well prepared trap, they usually mislead the genuine honest members to divert their attention to act irresponsibly, like enforcing Sharia law on their grass root supporters who are not ready yet to give up their mild narcotic Qat weed they enjoy chewing.

 

For the west, and specially for the American Zionists, the most unpleasant outcome of the events in Somalia is a Just Peaceful Model of Islamic Governance, applying the moral of true Islamic Law of peace with the world, Security for our neighbors, Tolerance with other faiths, Respect of others beliefs and the Rule of law, which collectively pave the way to a TRUE FREEDOM!

 

 

Nur

 

 

2008 eNuri Political Analyses

Trimming Pinocchio's Nose

[Nur]

Nomads

 

Have they stolen the show again?. 100% Islamic government (aka Extremist) for Somalia is not acceptable by Western Strategists if our leader has to sit side by side with other African Despots at the African Union who are collectively subservient to the Imperial Nations and their past colonialists. Hence, the requirement of the dilution of the Somali Parliament with the Warlords whose hands are still stained with crimes against humanity committed the past 18 years as a service for Ethiopia in its drive tow weaken its Muslim neighbor.

 

You see Nomad, Sheikh Shareef's joining of the fraternity of African Heads of states means joining corrupt heads of states who have all sold their nations and deposited their share of the commission in western Banks.

 

Now these men, are all scared to be tried in world court for either crimes against humanity or corruption, so, they all hear and obey what the Colonialists ( aka Aid Donors) dictate, who are taking back ten times value in return for the aid they give in the form of over produced American peanuts and maize.

 

As Sheikh Shareef joins this African Union body, there is no doubt that the Sheikh will learn to be politically correct at all times to maintain his membership to this exclusive club which is located in the capital of the nation that broke UN law by invading a sovereign nation with pretext that they are afraid from the Somali Resistance. A criminal nation hosting corrupt heads of states in the service of an unholy war against Islam based on lies.

 

 

Africa is hopeless!

 

 

Nur

[Malika]

^ ,let me ask you this;-

 

1.What were your expectations of the man and his position? -I clearly remember a whole thread dedicated to praising him,not so long ago in this section,what has changed?

 

2.What were your assumptions as to how he will start picking up the pieces of a shattered,knee jerked bare stomach of a country?

 

Didnt you know the 21st Centrury is the African Centrury?..

 

The man is going to need support,and it will have to come from the neighbours+international community to help him restore not only peace but rebuilding the infrastructure/economy of the country...Maa keligii kuu nool baad rabtaan inaad noqotaan? ,as I said somewhere else,we are not an island in planet Jupiter.

 

Whats wrong in seeking AID?

 

Are we self sufficient already?

 

Would it have made a difference if he had gone to the Arab league meeting[if one was going on]?

[Nur]

Malika sis

 

Ok sis, here is a real joke. Somali land pirates blackmail mother in law of a wealthy business man, they call him and demand ransom, the business man who is not fond of his mother in law tells them to keep her. They call again, they threaten him that they will release her, the alarmed business man asks " how much do you want?"

 

Now here is the real thing:

 

1. When we wanted a government, they denied us one for 16 years.

 

2. When the Islamic Courts brought peace for 5 months, they destroyed it.

 

3. When we adjusted to anarchy again, they force unwanted warlord government on us. which failed again.

 

4. Now, they want a compromise, between ICU and TFG, which i see like mixing alcohol with Milk.

 

 

Nur