Open Letter to the Muslim Community,
We, the People of the United States ask that you not vent your anger on us citizens for the acts George Bush. Our ballots are rigged and our elections are fixed. We no longer have a free press. We used to be a democracy but like you, we are occupied by a power that is hostile to freedom and liberty. When you attack the American people you only strengthen the hand of our common oppressor. I live in the San Francisco area where Muslims, Palestinians, and Jews march hand in hand for peace and social justice.
We too are angry about the state of the world, but we need to ask ourselves what we want for the future. Do we want live in violence or peace? What do we have to do to make sure that the future that we leave to the next generation is better that what we inherited?
Posted by marc at August 4, 2005 10:15 AMNot that I like Bush, but our elections are the same, if not better, than in the past, we were pissing off the Muslims long before Bush - he has def added a ton of fuel to their fire. I just get a little annoyed when people blame everything wrong in the world on the current administration, Rep or Dem. A little rationality please.
Posted by: Bill at August 4, 2005 04:28 PMAi gree. However we should allow some mechanism for folks to vent their anger at the people who deserve the blast and NOT against innocent people. Any suggestions?
Posted by: Nitin at August 4, 2005 11:01 PM''Who’s Defaming Arab-Americans?''
The spokeswoman was decrying the typecasting of American Muslims as implanted terrorists by television drama series.
She noted particularly the extremely popular series, “24” that stars Kiefer Sutherland. The very realistic series portrayed an American Muslim terrorist cell stealing a nuclear warhead and attempting to use it on Los Angeles. It also showed how they attempted to cause a meltdown on several nuclear power plants. They were successful in a one, which caused the death of thousands of people.
I must admit I watched every episode of “24” with growing interest and concern. It was compelling because it was so believable and probable. I was amazed that the Fox Network had the courage to produce such a program. Most Media executives will not touch such a theme because of fear of being “politically incorrect”, or worse, facing a lawsuit from the ever more aggressive C.A.I.R (Committee on American-Islamic Relations).
I have watched with intense interest the tireless and aggressive activity of organizations like C.A.I.R. To hear them speak, you would think that there was absolutely no basis for Americans to have concerns about the usually tightnit Muslim communities in our midst.
The slightest innuendo that there could be Muslim terrorist cells hidden in their midst is greeted with a flood of protests about their Constitutional rights being violated. The mere semblance of focusing on young Arab-American men for security checks brings out cries of “profiling” and “prejudice.”
I think it is far past time for a reality check by Arab-Americans, and especially the US leadership.
As it has been aptly said, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.” Let that sink in for a moment.
In the light of this stark fact, is it not insane that we greatly dilute the effectiveness our very limited security forces by forbidding them to focus on young Middle Eastern types and Muslim communities?
When America is destroyed, we can write over it, “They were Politically Correct.”
American born Muslims need to stop focusing so much on blocking security efforts to root out possible terrorist hiding in their midst and use that energy on zealously helping to find them.
It isn’t the pitiful few dramas on Muslim terrorists or the news commentators who are the cause of a growing suspicion toward Muslims. No! It is the increasing, ruthless attacks against Western Countries by your fellow Muslims that is doing it.
The more you demand your Constitutional Rights and do nothing to expose and cast out the extremists among you, the more suspect you will become in the eyes of fellow Americans.
Even when few Muslim leaders speak out against terrorist outrages – like 9/ll and the 7/7 and 7/21 attacks in London – they usually add, “But we can understand why these young Muslims came to feel the way they do.”
All it is going to take for a terrible backlash against the Muslim communities is a terrorist attack using some form of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). It will not be motivated by the few media dramas involving Muslim terrorist themes. It will be motivated by the present ‘do-nothing-attitude’ being demonstrated by you now.
It is time for the Arab-Americans to actively demonstrate that they are true Americans who want to do everything possible to apprehend the Muslim terrorists in our midst.
Then fellow-Americans will leap to your defense when ‘American extremists’ seek revenge for future attacks on our country.
Glad to see that there are some normal people left in the states. All we ever get to see on TV are the gun huging cowboys!
Posted by: Yelpy at August 9, 2005 09:54 AMGood letter.
To the first commenter: those who think our elections are better than the past are either not paying attention or they like psuedo-elections.
What ticks me off most, though, is comments like Tom Friedman's "It is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst." Telling Muslims to clean up their act is like telling Christians that they need to stop their people from bombing abortion clinics and starting wars of aggression.
Keep up the good work. I just came across your web log and have added a link to it from mine.
Posted by: Michael Miller at August 16, 2005 06:30 AMWe destroy all blind belief, because this is what feeds both Bushians and Islamatans. In fact, religion is and has always been the most common excuse for violence -- while claiming to be peaceful.
I am not able to understand how somebody as stupid, narrow-minded and blind as Bush can actually be elected; not to mention re-elected after starting a war based on what pretty much the whole world outside of the US knew to be lies and deceit. The outcome of this war of terror was predictable.
Lack of critical thinking might be a global problem, but the average American seems to suffer from a level of uninquisitivity that is damn right frightening. It is incomprehensible in a nation so technologically advanced, and deeply worrying.
Educate the believers, and teach people to think and doubt. That should be on the top of the list for those who are a little wiser than the others.
I do not understand why you ask muslims to spare the citizens of a democracy for the faults of its (re!)elected leader. A democracy does not get to blame its leader. Especially not one with a declaration of independence including controversial weapon 'rights' to protect the people from bad government. For once, use them for something good. Off the moron and his whole puppetry. ;)
Posted by: Wouter at August 21, 2005 09:15 PMI take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth: Islam is a terror organization.
For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9-11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.
Immediately after 9-11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."
But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."
Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."
Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.
That is part of the state of modern Islam.
Another fact about the state of Islam is that a majority of Muslims in countries like Jordan continue to believe that suicide bombings are legitimate. Still another is the poll reported by a left-leaning British paper than only 73 percent of British Muslims would tell police if they knew about a planned terrorist attack.
The other 27 percent? They are a part of modern Islam, too.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is outraged that I would dare to connect the worldwide epidemic of terrorism with Islam. They put it down to bigotry, asserting that a lifetime of disinterest in Islam has suddenly become blind hatred. They couldn't be more wrong.
Not to be mean to the folks at CAIR, but I don't – care, that is. I simply don't care about Islam, its theology, its history – I have no interest in it at all. All I care about is not getting blown to smithereens when I board a bus or ride a plane. I care about living in a world where terrorism and murder-suicide bombings are rejected by all.
And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.
Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.
Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9-11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia – both governed by Islamic law?
If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the "Boy Scout Handbook" and found language that justified and defended murder – and the scoutmasters in charge simply said "Could be" – the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago.
Today, Islam has entire sects and grand mosques that preach terror. Its theology is used as a source of inspiration by terrorist murderers. Millions of Islam's members give these killers support and comfort.
The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.
As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.
Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.
Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."
But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.
He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.
Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.
VF: "Islam is a terror orginization"
Islam is a faith. The root of it is "salaam," and its doctrine calls for peace through submission. Muslims have to submit to God, and God only; they also have to hear and obey their parents, as disobedience of parents is a cardinal sin, and their leader, unless he is in a state of obvious "kufr," or rejecection of God. Islam is founded on five pillars: "shahadaa," the testification that there is only one God, and Muhammad is his final messenger, ritual prayer, offered five times a day for the constant purication of the mind and soul, fasting for the month of Ramadan, giving the established annual donation called Zakat, and pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, if one is able. These are its pillars, and Paradise is automatically granted to those who sustain them, but Muslims are encouraged to build on the faith, and ensure a higher ranking in Heaven, by doing the supererogatory. On top of these pillars are the forbidding of the sinful and enjoining of the good, respect of parents, and so on, and at the very top, is Jihad. Jihad comes from the Arabic root word "jahada"; which means "exerting utmost effort" or "to strive." The Qur'an uses the term jihad only four times, none of which refer to armed struggle. As such, the use of the word jihad, in reference to holy Islamic war, was a latter day invention of Muslims. The Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, has recently spelled this out for the entire world, something they never thought to do in the past, but should have. The killing of captives is forbidden in Islam. Suicide is a sin in Islam. Killing of innocent people is forbidden. Any scholar who says otherwise commits a huge sin. So rest assured, you won't have to lose your talk radio job, since you are obviously just ignorant and not politicaly incorrect.
Posted by: Mohammed Aly at August 27, 2005 04:48 PM